Without a doubt, our personality depends on many things, not only on what happens to us or on our education.It also depends on the genetics that we prefer some things over others.There are those who are happy in the middle of the bustle, surrounded by people , and there are those who love solitude.
Apart from each other's tastes, we all place ourselves somewhere in that broad spectrum between extroversion and introversion, many of us will identify with one option or the other, or with some third party somewhere between those two extremes.What a team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam discovered is that this may have to do with the way our brain responds to rewards .
What are outgoing people like?
This term was popularized by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung at the beginning of the twentieth century, and refers, grossly , to those people who feel anxious to be alone and seek to recharge energy through contact with others .
According to statistical data, two-thirds of the population are outgoing , and therefore perhaps more attention has been given to introverts and the most effective ways in which they operate in society.
However, the Dutch study found some interesting things, including that the brains of each other are different .
But before, in the 60s, the psychologist Hans Eysenck proposed an initial definition: that extroverts are characterized by having a chronically low level of excitation.Physiologically, arousal is the degree to which our bodies and men They are alert, ready to respond to any stimulus.
Of course this varies during the day (upon waking up, for example), or by circumstances (it is not the same to be stuck in a queue as in conference room, without air conditioning, at three in the afternoon and without eating...).Eysenck's theory pointed out that extroverts have a slightly lower level of excitement, which makes them "work" more to reach what others consider normal or attractive when they do nothing.That is why they need company, new experiences, risks, to feel good.
Introverts, on the other hand, may feel stimulated by situations much calmer or that others would consider moderately interesting, they feel more anxiety with people around; for that reason they look for solitary activities, predictable environments and calm conversations on topics that matter to them.
What research is all about
In 2005 Michael Cohen, who led the study of the University of Amsterdam, proved the theory that the brain of extroverts responds in a different way, and that in some way it had to do with the dopamine , a chemical that plays a role crucial in the brain circuits that control reward, learning and responses to novelty.
If so, then would extroverts differ in how active their dopamine systems can be?
To find out, a group of volunteers (between introverts and extroverts) were asked to perform some game tasks while their brains were scanned, and to Before completing a personality profile, including a genetic analysis with a mouth swab.
When analyzing the image data, they realized how the brain activity had differed between the two groups.gaming tasks, the set of extroverts showed a much stronger response in two crucial brain regions: in the tonsil and in the nucleus accumbens ; the tonsil is necessary for the processing of emotional stimuli, and the nucleus Accumbens is key in the reward circuits of the brain and part of the dopamine system.This would confirm the idea that an extrovert's brain processes rewards very differently .
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