ConNiPtioNs

There is apparently no hope for some of us...

Shyness has a root in brain that long endures, study finds

By Paul Recer, Associated Press, 6/20/2003

WASHINGTON -- A shy child may learn to be more outgoing, but a study suggests that shy temperament may be inherited and that a brain marker for it does not change with age.

In the study, which appears this week in the journal Science, researchers conducted brain scans on 22-year-olds and found that those who had been classified 20 years before as inhibited or shy children had a distinctive reaction in their brains when confronted with novel images.

People who as toddlers had been judged to be inhibited showed in the scans that the amygdala structure in the brain responded much more actively to unexpected sights than was the case with subjects who as children had been judged to be more outgoing, said Jerome Kagan, professor of psychology at Harvard University.

''That is support for the notion that the reason they were shy, timid, and reserved when they were 2 years old is because they had an excitable amygdala,'' said Kagan.
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