A lighthearted study commissioned by Colin Firth has turned into a serious effort to discover whether the structure of our brains dictate our political inclinations.
While guest-hosting a BBC radio program last December, the Academy Award-winning actor said he would like to have British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg "scanned" to discover why the two never see eye-to-eye on issues.
So Firth, 50, contacted scientists at the University College London to undertake the study.
"I took this on as a fairly frivolous exercise: I just decided to find out what was biologically wrong with people who don't agree with me and see what scientists had to say about it and they actually came up with something," said Firth.


That something has recently been published in the journal Current Biology and has revealed some interesting insights into how hardwired we are on our political views.
Using MRI scans of more than 90 college students — in addition to Labour MP Stephen Pound and Alan Duncan, the conservative minister of State for International Development — scientists concluded that conservatives have larger areas concerned with fear and anxiety while liberals have greater capacity for optimiSΜ and courage.


"The anterior cingulate is a part of the brain that is on the middle surface of the brain at the front, and we found that the thickness of the grey matter, where the nerve cells of neurons are, was thicker the more people described themselves as liberal or left wing and thinner the more they described themselves as conservative or right wing," Geraint Rees, director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, told the BBC.


Suddenly, it makes a lot more sense why Republicans use scare tactics to frighten their base into action.
While Rees says a scan is not a wholly accurate way to measure one's political beliefs, there was "a strong correlation that reaches all our scientific tests of significance."


原来那个第三作者就是这么来的啊~
好有钻研精神 学习下

他真有学究精神。老妈是博士，遗传的。

那个10.77……
那个第三作者……
不过就算第三作者再酱油，咱国家要是能出个演戏之余还这么爱思考的……

天哪 随便想发个东西居然被审核了 第一次

Nick Clegg是英国自由民主党(The Liberal Democrats，常缩写为LibDems).
说明Colin Firth是保守党.
伤心.

Nick Clegg是英国自由民主党(The Liberal Democrats，常缩写为LibDems).
说明Colin Firth是保守党.
伤心.

Ls滴~表伤心哈，Colin之前是LibDems的，我记得还看到过他和Nick Clegg吃饭的照片，他以前是支持Clegg的，后来Clegg通过了一个议案， 貌似是增加英国的学费，Colin很不爽，所以现在又不支持了，于是他现在属于无党派人士…他政治上应该还属于比较激进的那种~ 额，叔啊，你能不能表这样热衷于政治捏~

回复：12楼
我也是想说这个
叔对政治的狂热真是无以复加了……

彻底不懂政治的路过。。。

他一直都敢说敢做，而且也是自由派的绝对不保守。