3,078
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→Amygdala and ACC
===Amygdala and ACC===
The Amygdala is involved emotional learning, and especially fear conditioning <ref>LeDoux, J. E. (1992). Brain mechanisms of emotion and emotional learning. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2(2), 191–197. doi:10.1016/0959-4388(92)90011-9</ref><ref>LeDoux, J. (2004). The Emotional Brain, Fear, and the Amygdala. Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, 23(4-5), 727–738. doi:10.1023/A:1025048802629</ref>. The amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs) of social networks <ref>Bickart, K. C., Wright, C. I., Dautoff, R. J., Dickerson, B. C., & Barrett, L. F. (2011). Amygdala volume and social network size in humans. Nature neuroscience, 14(2), 163–4. doi:10.1038/nn.2724</ref>.
The [[ACC]] is active in conflict detection <ref>Botvinick, M. M., Cohen, J. D., & Carter, C. S. (2004). Conflict monitoring and anterior cingulate cortex: an update. Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(12), 539–546.</ref>. And is a major player in the process of creating novel knowledge after puzels <ref>Holroyd, C. B., & Yeung, N. (2011). An integrative theory of anterior cingulate cortex function: Option selection in hierarchical reinforcement learning. The Neural Basis of Motivational and Cognitive Control, 333–349.</ref><ref>Holroyd, C. B., & Yeung, N. (2012). Motivation of extended behaviors by anterior cingulate cortex. Trends in cognitive sciences, 16(2), 122–128.</ref>. (Insula)The left insula was fund to be connected to warmth and painful sensations <ref>Stephani, C., Fernandez-Baca Vaca, G., Maciunas, R., Koubeissi, M., & Lüders, H. O. (2011). Functional neuroanatomy of the insular lobe. Brain structure & function, 216(2), 137–49. doi:10.1007/s00429-010-0296-3</ref>. this suggest that conservatives are feeling more threat<ref>[http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052970 Schreiber, D., Simmons, A., Dawes, C., Flagan, T., Fowler H., J., & Paulus, M. (2009). Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans.]</ref>. It was found the liberals reacts better to conflict detection, and their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more active during conflict detecting <ref>Amodio, D. M., Jost, J. T., Master, S. L., & Yee, C. M. (2007). Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nature neuroscience, 10(10), 1246–1247.</ref>. The Amygdala can be controlled by the rACC <ref>Etkin, A., Egner, T., Peraza, D. M., Kandel, E. R., & Hirsch, J. (2006). Resolving emotional conflict: a role for the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in modulating activity in the amygdala. Neuron, 51(6), 871–882.</ref>. (Non brain research)The idea that threat is causing people to become more conservatives was further corroborated by an experiment that showed that under fear conditions, liberal students judge like conservative students<ref>Nail, P. R., McGregor, I., Drinkwater, A. E., Steele, G. M., & Thompson, A. W. (2009). Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 901–907. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.013</ref>. Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals <ref>Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2009). Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals. Cognition and Emotion, 23(4), 714–725.</ref>. Individuals with measurably higher physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support conservatives policies like defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War, whereas individuals displaying measurably lower physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control.<ref>Oxley, D. R., Smith, K. B., Alford. John R., Hibbing, M. V., Miller, J. L., Scalora, M., Hatemi, P. K., et al. (2008). Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits. Science, 321, 1667–1670.</ref>. Liberals are more trusting but have smaller social networks, while conservatives find faster threatening facial emotion and have larger social networks<ref>Vigil, J. M. (2010). Political leanings vary with facial expression processing and psychosocial functioning. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13(5), 547–558. doi:10.1177/1368430209356930</ref>. Conservatives detect threatening faces more easly. With less stress<ref>Giuseffi, K. (2012). Processing Facial Emotions: An EEG Study of the Differences between Conservatives and Liberals and Across Political Participation. University of Nebraska.</ref>.