The capacity to adjust beliefs about one’s actions and their consequences in a constantly changing environment is a defining characteristic of advanced cognition. Disruptions to this ability, however, can negatively affect cognition and behavior, leading to such states of mind as paranoia, or the belief that others intend to harm us.
In a new study, Yale scientists uncover how one specific region of the brain might causally provoke these feelings of paranoia.
Their novel approach — which involved aligning data collected from monkeys with human data — also offers a new cross-species framework through which scientists might better understand human cognition through the study of other species.
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