Ball of tissue named lateral frontal pole found to be crucial in analysing alternative decisions – and may be unique to humans 
 
 A new brain region that appears to help humans identify whether they have made bad decisions has been discovered by researchers. 
 
 The size and shape of a large Brussels sprout, the ball of neural tissue seems to be crucial for the kind of flexible thought that allows us to consider switching to a more promising course of action. 
 
 While other brain parts keep track of how well, or not, our decisions are working for us, the new structure is more outward-looking, and mulls over what we might have done instead. 
 
 Scientists spotted the region, named the lateral frontal pole, after scanning the brains of healthy humans in two different ways. Further scans failed to find any comparable region in monkeys, suggesting the area is exclusive to humans. 
 
 "We know there are differences between humans and monkeys. But it is surprising how many similarities there can be, and how a couple of differences can mean our behaviour is so far removed from them," said Matthew Rushworth, a professor of cognitive neuroscience, who led the study at Oxford University. 
 
 "There are a few brain areas that monitor how good our choices are, and that is a very sensible thing to have. But this region monitors how good the choices are that we didn't take. It tells us how green the grass is on the other side of the fence." 
 
 The remarkable finding highlights how much scientists have to learn about the human brain and how cutting-edge lab techniques are redrawing the map of the most complex organ in the known universe. 
 
 One expert who spoke to the Guardian said the work was "stunning" and could pave the way for fresh advances in understanding psychiatric diseases. Details of the work are published in the Neuron journal. 
 
 The Oxford team recruited 25 healthy people for the study and scanned each person twice. One scan, called diffusion-weighted MRI, revealed the neural pathways that connect different parts of the brain. The other, called functional MRI (fMRI), showed which areas of the brain were most active when the patients were resting. 
 
 The combination of scans allowed the scientists to work out in exquisite detail how each part of the ventrolateral frontal cortex (vlFC), a region crucial for language and cognitive flexibility, was connected with any other part of the brain. From this, they identified 12 distinct areas of the vlFC that worked in different ways. 
 
 For the next stage of the study, the researchers took fMRI scans of the ventrolateral frontal cortex in macaques. These revealed 11 regions that closely matched those seen in humans. But the lateral frontal pole was missing. Humans have two, one above and behind each eyebrow. 
 
 "It might seem a bit pointless, but one of the ways to do something effectively is to monitor the other ways you could be doing something. People who have a bigger signal in this area are better at switching tack," said Rushworth. 
 
 Overall, the brain scans from humans and monkeys showed remarkable similarities. But another key difference was seen in the auditory areas of the brain. In humans, parts of the brain that help us understand spoken words were strongly connected to the vlFC. In monkeys, the same areas were connected to the part of the brain that deals with social and emotional responses. The difference may go some way to explaining why humans speak and monkeys don't. 
 
 "This is stunning work," said Karl Zilles, a neuroscientist at the Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine in Jülich, Germany. "It is the first time that modern MRI techniques have been combined to study differences in these parts of the brain in monkeys and humans." 
 
 "I am quite sure that this will turn out to be of great importance in studying psychiatric disease. What we understand now is the connectivity within the brain. We know the cables and the connections. What we have to do now is combine all this with how information is processed in the different brain areas," he added. ||||| What separates us from other primates? 
 
 The psychologists behind a new MRI study say it is key components in the ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the human brain, and how these components were connected up with other brain areas. When compared to equivalent MRI data from 25 macaque monkeys, the authors determined that it is unlike anything in the brains of some of our closest evolutionary relatives. 
 
 The ventrolateral frontal cortex area of the brain is involved in many of the highest aspects of cognition and language, and is only present in humans and other primates. Some parts are implicated in psychiatric conditions like ADHD, drug addiction or compulsive behavior disorders. Language is affected when other parts are damaged after stroke or neurodegenerative disease. A better understanding of the neural connections and networks involved should help the understanding of changes in the brain that go along with these conditions. 
 
 "We tend to think that being able to plan into the future, be flexible in our approach and learn from others are things that are particularly impressive about humans. We've identified an area of the brain that appears to be uniquely human and is likely to have something to do with these cognitive powers," says senior researcher Professor Matthew Rushworth of Oxford University's Department of Experimental Psychology.The brain is a mosaic of interlinked areas. We wanted to look at this very important region of the frontal part of the brain and see how many tiles there are and where they are placed. 
 
 "We also looked at the connections of each tile – how they are wired up to the rest of the brain – as it is these connections that determine the information that can reach that component part and the influence that part can have on other brain regions." 
 
 From the MRI data, the researchers were able to divide the human ventrolateral frontal cortex into 12 areas that were consistent across all the individuals. 
 
 "Each of these 12 areas has its own pattern of connections with the rest of the brain, a sort of "neural fingerprint", telling us it is doing something unique," says Professor Rushworth. 
 
 The researchers were then able to compare the 12 areas in the human brain region with the organization of the monkey prefrontal cortex. Overall, they were very similar with 11 of the 12 areas being found in both species and being connected up to other brain areas in very similar ways. 
 
 However, one area of the human ventrolateral frontal cortex had no equivalent in the macaque – an area called the lateral frontal pole prefrontal cortex. 
 
 "We have established an area in human frontal cortex which does not seem to have an equivalent in the monkey at all,' says first author Franz-Xaver Neubert of Oxford University. 'This area has been identified with strategic planning and decision making as well as "multi-tasking"." 
 
 The Oxford research group also found that the auditory parts of the brain were very well connected with the human prefrontal cortex, but much less so in the macaque. The researchers suggest this may be critical for our ability to understand and generate speech. 
 
 Published in Neuron. Source: University of Oxford
– Is the grass always greener on the other side of the fence? If you find yourself plagued by the question, thank the lateral frontal pole behind each of your eyebrows, says Oxford researcher Matthew Rushworth. The lateral frontal pole is a newly identified part of your brain which, scientists believe, helps us recognize when we've made poor decisions. "There are a few brain areas that monitor how good our choices are, and that is a very sensible thing to have. But this region monitors how good the choices are that we didn't take," notes Rushworth. Researchers zeroed in on the lateral front pole by scanning 25 people's brains using two imaging techniques. Putting the scans together helped the scientists learn about connections between the ventrolateral frontal cortex—which deals with language and cognition—and the rest of the brain, the Guardian reports. From there, the experts divided the ventrolateral frontal cortex into 12 regions, and then scanned monkeys' brains looking for those same regions. The scans indicate that monkeys have 11 of them—but only humans have the lateral frontal pole, Science 2.0 reports. In other words, the site notes, it's part of "what makes us human." (More brain news: Older brains aren't weaker.)