ScienCentral has a couple of brain-related articles this week. One article discusses a recent imaging study looking at our decision-making in dangerous situations. The anterior cingulate cortex is apparently the brain region critically involved when we make such risky decisions as what shall I do when the traffic light turns yellow, stop or go faster? The anterior cingulate remembers similar situations and uses this information to make a decision -- a vital task, but of of course there's always a downside, and in this case it's superstitious behavior (last time I wore this red shirt I got the job, therefore this is my "lucky" shirt). Interestingly, abnormalities in this area have been associated with schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive behavior.

And in another intriguing imaging study, researchers demonstrated hidden prejudice by observing the amygdala's activity. But that isn't the fascinating part. No, the fascinating part was that they could prevent the brain response (indicating prejudice) by getting the participants to articulate a verbal label (saying "African American" when seeing a photo of an African American). When they did that, the amygdala response was replaced by activity in an area of the brain more associated with thinking.