Mdedge Psychcast

*** There is a transcript available for this episodes at https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/940969 Yuan Chang Leong, PhD, spoke with Psychcast host Lorenzo Norris, MD, about his research into the neural underpinnings of right- and left-leaning individuals. Dr. Leong is a postdoctoral scholar in cognitive neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. He has no disclosures. Dr. Norris has no disclosures. Take-home points Dr. Leong and colleagues looked for further evidence of “neural polarization,” which is defined as divergent brain activity based on conversative versus liberal political attitudes. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the frontal lobe responsible for executive and higher-order brain function that makes sense and organizes what a person is seeing, hearing, and experiencing. Participants were shown news clips about immigration policy and their brain activity showed differences in activity of their dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), which is active in interpreting narrative conte