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posted by chromas on Monday September 03 2018, @04:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the where's-my-amygdala? dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

To procrastinate or not

[T]he answer may be down to differences in how our brains are wired, a study suggests.

It identified two areas of the brain that determine whether we are more likely to get on with a task or continually put it off.

Researchers used a survey and scans of 264 people's brains to measure how proactive they were.

Experts say the study, in Psychological Science, underlines procrastination is more about managing emotions than time.

It found that the amygdala - an almond-shaped structure in the temporal (side) lobe which processes our emotions and controls our motivation - was larger in procrastinators.

In these individuals, there were also poorer connections between the amygdala and a part of the brain called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (DACC).

The DACC uses information from the amygdala and decides what action the body will take. It helps keep the person on track by blocking out competing emotions and distractions.

"Individuals with a larger amygdala may be more anxious about the negative consequences of an action - they tend to hesitate and put off things," says Erhan Genç, one of the study authors, based at Ruhr University Bochum.

The researchers suggest that procrastinators are less able to filter out interfering emotions and distractions because the connections between the amygdala and the DACC in their brains are not as good as in proactive individuals.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Monday September 03 2018, @10:24PM (1 child)

    by Absolutely.Geek (5328) on Monday September 03 2018, @10:24PM (#729991)

    I call this active laziness; I will work damn hard to prevent me having to do boring shit again in the future

    --
    Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 04 2018, @06:35PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday September 04 2018, @06:35PM (#730392) Journal

    Emphasis on the "active" part for anyone who's ever spent thirty minutes automating a five minute task. Often I don't even care if I'll ever have to do that task again, if I can spend an hour coding to avoid ten minutes of "click click copy paste click click copy paste" then I'm doing it. One is an interesting puzzle, the other is just obnoxious.