Sensitive people have a rough time in this big, mean world of ours. And, recent research suggests our genes play a big role in determining just how sensitive we are to emotional events.
A study published last month in the Journal of Neuroscience looked at brain scans of 39 participants while they were presented images with varying degrees of visual "noise." Participants had to rate whether each picture was more or less "noisy" than the one before it. A week later, they were all asked to rate how "emotionally arousing" each image was, while researchers analyzed whether or not a particular variation of the ADRA2b gene associated with the neurotransmitter norepinephrine was present.
Results showed that participants who carried a certain variant of the ADRA2b gene picked up more of the noise in the presented images, especially in those images carrying an emotional impact. These subjects' brain scans revealed higher activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is involved in fear processing. The authors concluded that "[these] carriers perceive emotional
aspects of the world more vividly."
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