Structural brain differences in liberals and conservatives

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by MaddogK

Where's the original source ?

The linked article appears to have been run thru a very bad language translator:

I realised that I messed it up indeed and went back to the wrong one of three links I had.

Originally I read it on a German major newspaper. I then googled name and magazine title, and got several links in English, one of which was the one I wanted to post. But - I picked the wrong one.

Completely my own fault. Sorry.

[Skybird]

The essay I originally wanted to link to I did not find again. However, here is the original stuff.

CurrentBiology Mag homepage
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/

Summary
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/...822(11)00289-2

Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures [1]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors [2,3]. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex [4]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring [4] and recognition of emotional faces [5] by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [4,6] to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.

Full text via ScienceDirect (science paysite)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...5&searchtype=a