Selectively altering belief formation in the human brain

Humans form beliefs asymmetrically; we tend to discount bad news but embrace good news. This reduced impact of unfavorable information on belief updating may have important societal implications, including the generation of financial market bubbles, ill preparedness in the face of natural disasters, and overly aggressive medical decisions. Here, we selectively improved people’s tendency to incorporate bad news into their beliefs by disrupting the function of the left (but not right) inferior frontal gyrus using transcranial magnetic stimulation, thereby eliminating the engrained “good news/bad news effect.” Our results provide an instance of how selective disruption of regional human brain function paradoxically enhances the ability to incorporate unfavorable information into beliefs of vulnerability.

[1]  R. Davidson.  Cerebral asymmetry, emotion, and affective style. , 1995 .

[2]  Y. Miyashita,et al.  Common inhibitory mechanism in human inferior prefrontal cortex revealed by event-related functional MRI. , 1999, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[3]  J. Rothwell,et al.  Theta burst stimulation induces after‐effects on contralateral primary motor cortex excitability in humans , 2008, The Journal of physiology.

[4]  Brice A. Kuhl,et al.  Neural Systems Underlying the Suppression of Unwanted Memories , 2004, Science.

[5]  B. Kőszegi.  EGO UTILITY, OVERCONFIDENCE, AND TASK CHOICE , 2006 .

[6]  Y. Miyashita,et al.  Functional MRI of Macaque Monkeys Performing a Cognitive Set-Shifting Task , 2002, Science.

[7]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Psychological resources, positive illusions, and health. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[8]  Justin M. Rao,et al.  The Good News-Bad News Effect: Asymmetric Processing of Objective Information about Yourself , 2011 .

[9]  Roger E. A. Farmer,et al.  The Macroeconomics of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies , 1993 .

[10]  A. Dove,et al.  Prefrontal cortex activation in task switching: an event-related fMRI study. , 2000, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[11]  D. M. Green,et al.  Signal detection theory and psychophysics , 1966 .

[12]  J. Paling.  Strategies to help patients understand risks , 2003, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[13]  J. Gabrieli,et al.  Immature Frontal Lobe Contributions to Cognitive Control in Children Evidence from fMRI , 2002, Neuron.

[14]  T. Robbins,et al.  Inhibition and the right inferior frontal cortex , 2004, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[15]  Dominic D. P. Johnson,et al.  The evolution of overconfidence , 2009, Nature.

[16]  E E Smith,et al.  The neural substrate and temporal dynamics of interference effects in working memory as revealed by event-related functional MRI. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[17]  T. Robbins,et al.  Defining the Neural Mechanisms of Probabilistic Reversal Learning Using Event-Related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging , 2002, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[18]  Christoph W Korn,et al.  How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality , 2011, Nature Neuroscience.

[19]  D. Paton.  Disaster preparedness: a social‐cognitive perspective , 2003 .