Following the Asian tsunami, scientists struggled to explain reports that primitive aboriginal tribesmen had somehow sensed the impending danger in time to join wild animals in a life-saving flight to higher ground. A new theory suggests that the anterior cingulate cortex, described by some scientists as part of the brain's "oops" center, may actually function as an early warning system -- one that works at a subconscious level to help us recognize and avoid high-risk situations.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis has identified a brain region that clearly acts as an early warning system -- one that monitors environmental cues, weighs possible consequences and helps us adjust our behavior to avoid dangerous situations.

"Our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought," said Joshua Brown, Ph.D., a research associate in psychology in Arts & Sciences and co-author of a study on these findings in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal Science.

The findings offer rigorous scientific evidence for a new way of conceptualizing the complex executive control processes taking place in and around the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain area located near the top of the frontal lobes and along the walls that divide the left and right hemispheres.

Brown said, "We find that this brain region can actually learn to recognize when you might make a mistake, even before a difficult decision has to be made. So the ACC appears to act as an early warning system -- it learns to warn us in advance when our behavior might lead to a negative outcome, so that we can be more careful and avoid making a mistake."

Researchers provided study participants with a series of blue or white cues and asked them to push one button or another depending on the direction of arrows. Brain imaging suggested that an area of the brain had learned to recognize that blue cues indicated a greater potential for error, thus providing an early warning signal that negative consequences were likely to follow their behavior.

Known to be an important component of the brain's executive control system, the ACC is believed to help mediate between cold, hard, fact-based reasoning and emotional responses, such as love, fear or anticipation.

"For a long time we've been interested in how the brain figures out how to integrate cognitive information about the world with our emotions, how we feel about something," Brown said. "For many reasons, people think the ACC might be the brain structure responsible for converging these different signals. It seems to be an area that's involved in deciding what information gets prioritized in the decision-making process. It seems able to link motivational and affect information - things like goodness or badness - and to use this information to bring about changes in cognition, to alter how we think about things."

Recent studies have documented spikes of activity in the ACC just as people realize that they've made a mistake of some kind, a sensation some describe as the "oops" moment. Theories based on these findings suggest that the primary role of the ACC is to help detect and subsequently correct mistakes or, alternatively, to detect the state of high-conflict that often accompanies mistakes.

Brown's study, co-authored with Todd Braver, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology in Arts & Sciences, offers compelling evidence that the ACC is better understood as a pre-emptive early warning system, one that is actively working to help us anticipate the potential for mistakes and thus avoid them altogether.

"It appears that this area of the brain is somehow figuring out things without you necessarily having to be consciously aware of it," Brown said. “In some cases, the brain's ability to monitor subtle environmental changes and make adjustments may actually be even more robust if it takes place on a subconscious level."

From Washington University in St. Louis

Excerpted from www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/7036