Why Does the Anterior Midcingulate Cortex Grow?

Andrew Huberman says the anterior midcingulate cortex enlarges when people do hard things. It shrinks when people tend to shy away from hard things. Activity and size correlate with success in doing hard things. People can build the region up by doing hard things they do not want to do.

Huberman says neuroscience still does not know the computations or the math the region is doing. Researchers cannot yet say the anterior midcingulate cortex computes a prior notion of self with a goal, with purpose, with fear, with anger, and with love. They also do not know a computation that leads to persistence versus quitting and deliberation versus assuredness. The region is not a total black box, but a lot is still unknown.

Huberman says people can start to understand more about tenacity and willpower, at the present point in history, by talking with someone about the anterior midcingulate cortex, and then anterior midcingulate cortex recordings can tell researchers about that person. He says the point applies in particular to Ross Edgley, and Ross Edgley agrees. In the future, the field will have technologies able to unpack the computations with a lot of precision. People are developing the technologies, and the technologies are not there yet. Huberman wants to avoid saying what is not known.