Damage to brain’s self-control region may fuel political passions

A study has found that damage to the prefrontal cortex in the brain that helps with self-control and reasoning could intensify one's political feelings, while damage to brain structure 'amygdala', which is involved in emotional processing, could bring them down.

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Conducted on Vietnam War veterans, the study compared people who had very localised brain lesions (abnormal change or injury) with those who did not.

Researchers have thus identified for the first time which brain networks regulate political passion.

"While most people have not sustained brain injuries akin to those experienced by the veterans in the study, our findings tell us what neural circuits are at play for the population at large," senior author Jordan Grafman, a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Northwestern University, US, said.