University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
Curr Biol. 2011 Apr 26;21(8):677-80. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.017. Epub 2011 Apr 7.
Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex. 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 and recognition of emotional faces 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 to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.
在心理测量方面，自由派和保守派的认知风格存在很大差异。政治态度的可变性反映了遗传影响及其与环境因素的相互作用。最近的研究表明，在前扣带皮层起源的事件相关电位测量的与冲突相关的活动与自由主义之间存在相关性。在这里，我们表明，这种政治态度的功能相关性在大脑结构中有一个对应物。在一大群年轻人中，我们使用结构 MRI 将自我报告的政治态度与灰质体积联系起来。我们发现，更大的自由主义与前扣带皮层的灰质体积增加有关，而更大的保守主义与右杏仁核的体积增加有关。在另一组独立的参与者中，我们发现了这些结果的复制。我们的研究结果扩展了之前的观察结果，即政治态度反映了自我调节冲突监测和情绪面孔识别的差异，表明这些态度反映在人类大脑结构中。尽管我们的数据不能确定这些区域是否在政治态度的形成中发挥因果作用，但它们与之前的工作相结合，表明大脑结构与调节政治态度的心理机制之间可能存在联系。
