NYT today: Democrat versus Republican brains--response to violence

[woo me with science]

Sorry if this has been posted before.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/20/science/20SCAN.html?pagewanted=1&hp

"In the experiment with Mr. Graham, researchers exposed him to photographs of the presidential candidates, commercials for President Bush and John Kerry, and other video images, including the "Daisy" commercial from 1964. In that advertisement, promoting Lyndon B. Johnson against Barry Goldwater, images of a girl picking petals from a daisy were replaced by images of a nuclear explosion....'I was shocked at how much political capital Bush is trying to make out of 9/11,' Mr. Graham said. 'But I found it kind of interesting that Johnson was using the same kind of technique against a Republican.'

The researchers had already zeroed in on those images and their effect among Democrats on the part of the brain that responds to threats and danger, the amygdala. Mr. Graham, like other Democrats tested so far, reacted to the Sept. 11 images with noticeably more activity in the amygdala than did the Republicans, said the lead researcher, Marco Iacoboni, an associate professor at the U.C.L.A. Neuropsychiatric Institute who directs a laboratory at the Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center there.

"The first interpretation that occurred to me," Professor Iacoboni said, "is that the Democrats see the 9/11 issue as a good way for Bush to get re-elected, and they experience that as a threat...
But then the researchers noted that same spike in amygdala activity when the Democrats watched the nuclear explosion in the "Daisy" spot, which promoted a Democrat.

Mr. Freedman suggested another interpretation based on his political experience: the theory that Democrats are generally more alarmed by any use of force than Republicans are. For now, Professor Iacoboni leans toward this second interpretation, though he is withholding judgment until the experiment is over. "

[loathesomeshrub]

1. Democrats are smarter than repugs

I don't know about this, but I know and it should be obvious to all of us, that if they were inclined to check the intelligence in the general population, they would find that we, who have been on to bush since 1999, are way smarter than those who would re elect him, especially after all the revelations recently.