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  1. The thumb-sized area of the brain that bears the hard-to-remember name “pregenual part of the frontal cingular cortex” is to blame.

    It's responsible for our emotional responses to a wide variety of events, whether it's reading a letter to your neighbor or feeling our stomachs growl during an important meeting.

    According to Virginia Sturm, a researcher at the University of California's Center for Memory and Aging, changes in this area of the brain “regulate” feelings of shame. In other words, the activity of that very pregenual part determines why some people proudly declare that conscience with shame was exchanged for an eraser in kindergarten, while others blush as soon as they hear a four-letter word with the letter “f”.

    Sturm studied the “behavior” of the cingular cortex, or cingulate gyrus, both in healthy people and in those who suffered from neurological disorders, simultaneously comparing the features of this area with the behavior of subjects during a special “embarrassing” task — namely, volunteers had to listen to their own performance of one of the songs in karaoke. As a result of the experiment, it turned out that the smaller the cingulate gyrus, the less embarrassment a person experiences.

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