Scientists have located an area of the brain that exercises self-control and restraint over human behaviour, according to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The discovery is the first neuroscientific evidence that a specific area of the brain is responsible when people reverse what they are doing while they are in the middle of an impulsive action.
"The part of the brain that's involved in stopping yourself from carrying out an action is different from the parts of the brain involved in formulating the plan to take the action," Dr. Martha Farah, director of the Centre for Cognitive Neurosciences at the University of Pennsylvania told CTV's Canada AM.
The area of the brain identified in the study as being responsible for self-control is located directly above and between the eyes and is called the dorsal fronto-median cortex. This area is activated when a person consciously decides against performing an already planned action.
The study, authored by psychologists Marcel Brass of Ghent University in Belgium and Patrick Haggard of University College in London, varied from the traditional approach, which often looks at the brain resisting a trigger impulse to act.
"What Brass and Haggard did was to have people formulate a plan spontaneously on their own and then stop themselves from carrying out that plan," Farah said. "And that's really a lot more like real-life situations where we're trying to decide should we do it or not."
Exercises included asking study participants to press a button on a computer and, in some cases, stop themselves before they performed this action.
While the discovery could explain relatively innocuous events such as whether or not to indulge in a food craving or to speed through a traffic light, it also could provide some insight into cognitive issues with social and medical effects.
"There's been a lot of interest in impulse control. Because poorly controlled impulses are a great source of human misery, everything from substance addiction to personality disorders," Farah said.
The findings of the study may help in the research surrounding attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). There is a possibility that the area of the brain located in the study is not functioning properly in those who have the disorder.
"They didn't test that hypothesis directly, but that's suggested by their results," Farah said.
Another possibility is that people may be able to claim they were not responsible for their actions in the future, due to whether this area of the brain was functioning properly or not. Farah indicated more studies in neuroscience would be needed to explore this possibility.
"These are all things that we used to view as a matter of character and we would feel it was appropriate to blame and punish somebody for," Farah said. "But now, if it's just a physical mechanism in here that isn't working right, what do you do with that?"
