By IANS,
Washinton : With the help of a Karaoke experiment — recording people belting out an old tune and then asking them to listen to their own singing minus the music — scientists have found which part of the brain is tied with embarrassment.
The study was conducted at the University of California at San Francisco and Berkeley.
Most of the subjects had degenerative diseases, which helped scientists identify a thumb-sized bit in the right hemisphere of the front part of the brain called the “pregenual anterior cingulate cortex” as integral to embarrassment.
The degree to which the singers were embarrassed in hearing themselves sing “My Girl”, the 1964 hit by the Temptations, depended on the integrity of this particular region, according to a University of California statement.
“In healthy people, watching themselves sing elicits a considerable embarrassment reaction,” said study co-author Virginia Sturm, postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-San Francisco.
Their blood pressure goes up, their heart rate increases, and their breathing changes, she explained. People who had neurological damage in the medial frontal cortex, however, responded more indifferently.
“This brain region predicted the behaviour,” said Sturm. “The smaller the region, the less embarrassed the people were.”
Knowing that people lose their ability to be embarrassed and which part of the brain governs that ability may suggest ways to help diagnose people with certain neurodegenerative diseases earlier.
These findings were presented at the 63rd annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Hawaii.