CYBCYL Chapter 9 – Looking into Worry and Obsessiveness: The Cingulate System

This chapter delves into the role of the cingulate system in the brain. It is what enables to people to be flexible when considering other peoples’ ideas and viewpoints. Therefore, problems with this system would likely make someone inflexible and unable to cooperate with others. The cingulate system has many other functions including:

• Ability to shift attention
• Cognitive flexibility 
• adaptability
• movement from idea to idea
• ability to see options
• ability to cooperate
• ability to “go with the flow”

The chapter showed that in SPECT scans, brains that were more overactive in the cingulate area were correlated with subjects’ worrying as well as anger and obsessiveness. If you read my post in Chapter 2, you may remember that I talked about the boy who had been obsessed with taking out his teeth for the “tooth fairy.” Through a SPECT scan, it was later determined that this way because of a problem in his cingulate system. What this means is that when this system is overexcited, our perspective of the outside world changes (in this case, we become more inflexible and over-attached to certain things). In this chapter, Amen also focuses on the connection between obsessive-compulsive disorder and the cingulate system (which is very intuitive to consider). Please read this chapter for further information.

This chapter is very significant towards my understanding of human behavior. I did not know how or why certain people were more inflexible than others and why some people were known as “constant worriers.” I also did not know where OCD affected the brain and how it developed in a child and adult. However, this chapter answers all those questions.

The cingulate system is one of the most important parts of our brains, especially in determining human behavior. It was very interesting to read about how all the functions listed above were linked in some way, and I have seen that the key to understanding comes from knowing the key functions of the cingulate system. In my honest opinion, society may favor those who are very flexible and those who can tolerate plans changing suddenly at the last minute. I look forward to reading about some of Amen’s prescriptions for the cingulate system.