• April 27, 2024

Lust. Gluttony. Avarice. Sloth. Go to. Envy. Pride. They are the seven deadly sins that have so magnificently described, for centuries, poets like Dante Alighieri and his Divine Comedy (1265 - 1321), or embodied in the canvas painters like El Bosco (1450 - 1516).

Is there any biological implication, possibly cerebral, related to the impulses that we know with the name of the seven deadly sins?

A group of researchers from various American, English and Australian universities, among others, have studied with sophisticated techniques such as functional magnetic resonance, which are the brain areas most related to our dark part. In GetQoralHealth we give you some clues.

Lust and its impact on the brain

The scientists of the Northwestern University of Illinois (United States) They have shown that sins such as lust activate the cerebral reward systems, including evolutionarily ancient regions, such as the nucleus accumbens and the hypothalamus, located deep in the brain, which provides us with such fundamental feelings as pain, pleasure, reward and punishment.

In particular, these regions constitute the heart of the system, as if we were designed to sin or feel, at least, that the "sin of lust" originates pleasure. In any case, the researchers point out, we can not forget that the inclination towards lust also has a favorable effect for the conservation of the human race since it increases the active interest towards procreation throughout human history.

Gluttony and excesses

This sin could be defined as the excessive consumption of food and drink, although in a broader sense it can be related to all kinds of excesses. In Dante's hell, those who committed this sin were condemned to eat rats, toads, lizards and live snakes.

In reality, it has been shown that when we eat our brain reward circuit system it is also activated. According to the scientist Adam Safron of Northwestern University, the gratification responds to an evolutionary logic, since in the environment in which we evolved, food was scarce and nature was in charge of gratifying the human being when eating to store fat and survive in times of food deprivation.

In those adverse conditions was when the brain was modeled by establishing how rewarding were the foods. By changing circumstances, what at one time was an instinct for survival is now linked to sin. In fact, overeating is currently a serious medical problem that affects a large part of humanity.

Greed is a sin similar to lust or greed but applied to the acquisition of riches in particular. Evolutionary considerations and of cerebral reward similar to those made with gluttony would also be applicable to greed or greed, he points out.

Laziness and other sins

According to Safron, there is an evolutionary justification for laziness: "one never had the certainty of when a substantial meal would be eaten again. So, if possible, he would rest. The calories that were not burned by inactivity could then be used in the body's processes of growth or recovery. "

On the other hand, several Japanese studies have investigated the effects of envy and pride showing that they are related to brain areas such as the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain, confirming the theory that envy and pride can be painful emotions.

Regarding anger, in the University of New South Wales in Australia a study was done, whipping volunteers to see what happened in their brain when they got angry. In the depressive and inclined to hold a grudge, the medial prefrontal cortex was also activated. This could be related to the ancestral evolution of the brain that was affected by the environment.

Video Medicine: Your Brain in Love and Lust - by Scientific American (April 2024).