Brains Hard-Wired to Swing Left or Right

The brains of conservatives and liberals function in fundamentally different ways—with liberals more capable of accepting ambiguity and conflict, and conservative better able to pursue a single-minded course. That's the conclusion of  a new study on the neurobiology of politics, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The experiment, based on how well subjects recognized two letters on a computer screen, tracked activity in part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual response—pressing a key for the most frequently flashed letter—and a considered response—recognizing when not to press a key. Results show "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style," said one neurologist. (More neurobiology stories.)