The brain prefers to be optimistic

The human brain is predisposed to optimism, probably because of an evolutionary strategy that makes us overlook the dangers.

Scientific studies have shown that, when in doubt, the human brain tends to be optimistic. We ignore warnings about the danger of sending text messages while driving, drive our vehicles without wearing a seat belt without assessing the danger in case of accidents, close our eyes to statistics that suggest that our eating habits kill us, and we tend to believe that everything will have a happy ending for us although the circumstances seem to indicate the opposite, and that the misfortunes only happen to the others.

A group of British neuroscientists has shown for the first time that deactivating certain brain areas by magnetic pulses can make these optimistic tendencies disappear.

In particular, there are two areas of the brain, known as right and left inferior frontal gyrus, that control, at least partially, the feelings of optimism and pessimism. The left front turn processes the information with a positive bias, while the right side looks at what happens and what can happen in the future "with bad eyes". However, the left side acts much more effectively, which explains why we turn a deaf ear to bad news.

Scientists from the University College of London's Neurology Institute decided to figure out what would happen if the optimistic neurons of the human brain were disconnected? After using magnetic stimulation to numb the lower left frontal circulation of a series of volunteers, they were shown a list of negative events to assess what probability was that they would occur, with and without real data of the incidence for an average individual. Thus, subjects that had been subjected to the experiment were verified and they had deactivated the optimism tend to be more logical when they were shown the data and to perceive less their own "rose color world" that people with all the active brain.

But why this trend? According to the researchers, it is likely that the predisposition to optimism is an evolutionary strategy to ignore the dangers we face and be more willing to explore new environments, which increases the chances that our species will survive.