U. COLLEGE LONDON (UK) —Researchers in the U.K. have identified an area of the brain that is larger in people who are good at reflecting on their own thoughts and emotions.

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 “It’s something we do all the time, but some people are better at it than others.  Even if we don’t get feedback when we make a choice, we often know intuitively if it’s a good or a bad decision.”

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“We introspect when we think about our own thoughts, feelings, or the decisions we have made,” says Steve Fleming, joint first author of the study and a researcher at University College London.

“It’s something we do all the time, but some people are better at it than others. Even if we don’t get feedback when we make a choice, we often know intuitively if it’s a good or a bad decision.”

Measuring introspection has previously proved challenging. Unlike learning, where a person gets better at a task, or decision-making, where we can determine whether a person’s choice is correct or not, there are no outward indicators for introspective thought.

Details of the work are reported in the journal Science.

“We found a correlation between introspective ability and the structure of a small area of prefrontal cortex near the front of the brain,” explains Geraint Rees, study leader.

“The better a person was at introspection, the more grey matter they had in this area. The same was true for the white matter or nerve connections in this area.

 via futurity.org