Thursday, July 13, 2006

Political allegiance impacts brain's response to candidates Science Blog: "A new UCLA imaging study finds political party allegiance affects the brain activity of partisans viewing the faces of candidates. "Published online July 9, 2006, by the peer-reviewed journal Neuropsychologia, the study finds a partisan's brain responds to the opposition candidate's face by activating cognitive networks designed to regulate emotion. "Researchers at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA suggest the neural activity has one of three goals: 1) suppression of unpleasant emotions; 2) suppression of latent positive feelings toward an opposing candidate; or 3) an increase in negative feelings toward an opposing candidate. 'We still have much to learn about the neural basis of political decision making; however, these findings show party allegiance has a clear impact on brain activity,' said lead author Marco Iacoboni, associate professor in residence at the Semel Institute, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UCLA Brain Research Institute." No word whether or not this explains the current echo chamber phenomena. Category: Denver November 2006 Election 6:29:58 PM

HB1022 The Wash Park Prophet thinks that HB1022 is probably a waste of time for all concerned. From the article, "The trouble is that there is no good faith legal argument under existing law for the lawsuit the attorney general is mandated to bring by this referendum. The the attorney general is just going to have to [resort to] making [stuff] up, contrary to well settled law, and disclose to the court that he or she wants it to ignore precedent and change the law to rule in Colorado's favor. Courts generally respond to legal tactics like this by promptly dismissing the case, and all lawyers hate losing." Category: Denver November 2006 Election 5:45:13 PM

© Copyright 2006 John Orr. Last update: 7/30/06; 7:52:11 AM.