Effect of Hatred on Brain (Science article)

note; this is interesting study for fusion practitioners….apparently hatred makes you more alert. Challenge is to get the alertness and focus without the hate. M.

HOW HATRED TRANSFORMS YOUR BRAIN
By Annalee Newitz
io9.com
October 29, 2008

http://io9.com/5070226/how-hatred-transforms-your-brain

When you see somebody you hate, whether it’s an evil ex or a mean colleague,
your brain undergoes a rather unexpected transformation. A new study
published in PLoS One today reveals that hatred isn’t the blind, irrational
emotion it might seem. In fact, hate activates the brain regions associated
with higher reason and the ability to predict what other people will do.

British neuroscientists did fMRI brain scans of subjects while they looked
at pictures of people they claimed to hate. As a baseline, they also showed
them pictures of people they felt neutrally about. Not surprisingly, hatred
activated the regions of the brain associated with aggression and the motor
regions that would translate this aggression into action. And given that
love often turns into hate, it’s not too surprising that hatred also
activates two brain regions, the putamen and the insula, associated with
passionate, romantic love.

What is surprising is the degree to which hatred is associated with logic
and planning. The researchers write in their paper:

“What seems not to be in doubt is that this cortical zone involves the
premotor cortex, a zone that has been implicated in the preparation of motor
planning and its execution. We hypothesize that the sight of a hated person
mobilizes the motor system for the possibility of attack or defense. In
addition, the involvement of the frontal pole consider to be critical in
predicting the action of others, arguably an important feature when
confronted by a hated person . . . it is more likely that in the context of
hate the hater may want to exercise judgment in calculating moves to harm,
injure or otherwise extract revenge.”

So basically, hating somebody heightens your judgment and your ability to
assess what other people are likely to do next. The researchers note that in
this way hatred is neurologically unlike love, which tends to deactivate
judgment.

Semir Zeki, one of the authors, suggested that they are on the path to
developing tools that might allow researchers to figure out how much
somebody hates another person just by doing a brain scan. Somehow, he
imagines this might be used in court:

“Interestingly, the activity in some of these structures in response to
viewing a hated face is proportional in strength to the declared intensity
of hate, thus allowing the subjective state of hate to be objectively
quantified. This finding may have legal implications in criminal cases, for
example.”

Given that hate crimes lead to tougher sentences many states, Zeki might
well be right. If a court can prove that somebody committed an act of
violence while under the influence of hate, that person might go to jail for
a much longer time than they would otherwise.