prefrontal cortex

That universality, coupled with the sense that before the prefrontal cortex has fully formed, feelings will always run hot and bright, meant that the writers had a lot of empathy for these characters.

Specifically, the areas of the medial prefrontal cortex responsible for processing social environments were active when infants were exposed to faces.

She found that nostalgic music activated an area of the brain typically associated with remembering personal experiences and narratives called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, along with the reward networks of the brain.

Studies in humans suggested that having control activates the prefrontal cortex — one of the most recent parts of the human brain to evolve that is associated with cognition, decision-making and motivation.

While kindness is hard to access in the immediate aftermath of stress, just as it can be when someone is chronically lonely, it could be a shortcut to bringing the prefrontal cortex back online.