June 05, 2005
Social problems activate additional brain resources:
Continuing the recent evolutionary psychology theme (here,here), I'd like to recommend a piece posted by the ever excellent Carl Zimmer. Recent brain scanning evidence shows, possibly, that problems involving social exchange activate additional specific brain regions compared to problems of the same logical form which don't involve social exchange. What's this got to do with Evolutionary Psychology? Well the particular tasks involved are something called the Wason Selection Task, and a variant on it developed by the Evolutionary Psychologists Tooby and Cosmides, and subsequently used as a foundational piece of research for the Evolutionary Psychology movement (note the capital E and the capital P). Swing over to Carl's place and take a look.
