{"id":223100,"date":"2025-10-08T15:14:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T20:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/newly-discovered-brain-cells-are-wired-for-uncertainty"},"modified":"2025-10-08T15:14:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T20:14:45","slug":"newly-discovered-brain-cells-are-wired-for-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/newly-discovered-brain-cells-are-wired-for-uncertainty","title":{"rendered":"Newly discovered brain cells are wired for uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/newly-discovered-brain-cells-are-wired-for-uncertainty2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Newly identified brain cells evolved along the theme, \u201cLife is uncertain; Eat dessert first.\u201d The neurons, located in the front part of the brain, are most active when the outcome of a decision is uncertain, suggesting that they help with decision making, along with learning and mental flexibility in general.<\/p>\n<p>This UCLA discovery in rats could aid the development of new treatments that involve the targeting of rigid thought patterns such as those in anxiety and <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/substance+use+disorders\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">substance use disorders<\/a> in humans, who also have the same kind of <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/brain+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">brain cells<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we have full knowledge of the things that will happen, then we really don\u2019t need to learn, and we don\u2019t have to adapt our behavior,\u201d said Alicia Izquierdo, a UCLA professor of behavioral neuroscience in the department of psychology and the senior author of the paper <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-63866-5\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Newly identified brain cells evolved along the theme, \u201cLife is uncertain; Eat dessert first.\u201d The neurons, located in the front part of the brain, are most active when the outcome of a decision is uncertain, suggesting that they help with decision making, along with learning and mental flexibility in general. This UCLA discovery in rats [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}