"Don't worry needlessly", "All will be well!", "Live in the present!" Scientists have proven that the slogans "positive thinking", so popular today, is not feasible. The brain has a bad habit to compare the current experience with the previous one. In the XXI century it somehow became unfashionable. Psychologists add: positive thinking leads to depression.

Before an important event to persuade myself "not to worry needlessly" and "to wait until everything is resolved"meaningless. To follow this rule prevents not lazy and not prone to pessimism, and the device of the human brain. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh (USA) decided to analyze: how the brain makes decisions on the issues that it faced in the past? In an article published in the journal Neuron, the authors of the experiment say: our Central nervous system keeps the memory about the decisions - and in the same areas of the brain that are responsible for the current solutions to similar problems.

The nature of the experiments was to estimate the activity of the frontal cortex during execution of meta-cognitive tasks. The study was conducted on monkeys. The feature of the human brain and primates are that we can reflect on their own thinking and actions, that is capable of reflection. For this complex function is responsible frontal cortex. It is also responsible for social behavior, decision making and individual personality traits. Needless to say that it is particularly well developed in humans and primates. Our neurons frontal cortex and the corresponding nerve cells of monkeys working on common basic laws.

The essence of the experiment was that the monkeys had to monitor the running lights on a flat surface. At some point, among them there were constant "dominant" ogonek. The monkey had to guess where it will appear the next time. For the correct answer animals received the award, but not immediately. The experience was arranged so that the monkey could comprehend solution and figure out how it was true. Behind the decision was to keep on eye movements and activity of the respective areas of the brain.

For the monitoring of their activity, the researchers chose three blocks: dorsolateral zone, responsible for planning body, the area responsible for movement of the eyes and focus of visual attention, and the extension of the visual center, busy zaccagnini eye movement (this word called fast, strictly coordinated movement of the eyes, made in one direction).

As scientists have discovered, the choice of the dominant light in monkeys was accompanied by an active work of all three areas of the cortex. But the understanding of the decision: it was correct or incorrect, and should do the same this time, accounted for mainly to extension of the visual zone management zaccagnini movements. That is, it is on the section of the brain, which was involved in the current situation.

The discovery that should upset supporters of the so-called positive thinking, calling to live "here and now, not thinking about the past": it is the area, which was responsible for the condition "here and now", and is responsible for reflection. Scientists, however, this does not surprise me. "All people want to receive rewards from life. And to continue to receive them, they should compare this with the experience gained in the past", concluded the study's author, mark Sommer.

However, there are people that are able to follow the commandments of positive thinking like "avoiding negative thoughts in your mind!" and "don't think about the past mistakes!". This schizophrenics and people with Alzheimer's disease. They thought process is interrupted, it is difficult to link the previous steps and their results with the present action. They can afford not to think about that last time stepped on the rake at this place.

The irony about positive thinking is appropriate. In the XXI century people were inspired by the idea "fast" deliverance from suffering, contradictions of his own life and the life of trouble. The technique is essentially the ostrich principle: if I don't see something and not think about it, it means this there. But the subconscious does not forgive the suppression of negative emotions. Because of the emotional sphere - something like the sixth sense, through which we understand the world. Try "off" to separate the feelings of fear, anger, envy, irritation - the equivalent of trying to voluntarily become colorblind or to amputate a limb.

Of course, we are not talking about the fact that, for example, purposely to fuel your anger or to cultivate envy (using the analogy with the senses - you will not voluntarily to look at blinding light or sit on the button). Just any feelings help us to Orient ourselves in the external world, to distinguish good from bad, comfortable from uncomfortable and so on. Ignore them or "try to fix" cannot. In 2009, psychologists have shown that positive thinking can increase depression. Canadian scientists Joanna wood, John Lee and Alana Perunovich conducted an experiment that proved that artificially created "positive thinking" drives person still in great anguish.

Researchers have tested 68 students from the University of new Brunswick on the level of their self assessment. After that they randomly divided into two groups and asked for five minutes to write down all your thoughts and experiences. In the experimental group with an interval of 15 seconds rang the doorbell, after which the volunteers had to speak loudly: "I am the most charming person!". A control group recorded their thoughts in complete silence.

"It turned out that people with low self-esteem after these sessions esteem fell into a much more somber mood than their comrades, " said the psychologist Joanna wood. - Installation focus on the positive emotions in this case was lip service: when people hear the statement that contradicts what they believe, their consciousness re-launches the self-evaluation process, in which people get disappointed in ourselves more".

There neurophysiological evidence of harm "violent positive". For example, the American neuropsychology Richard Davidson, Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen more than 20 years has studied human smile. They found that insincere, a forced smile activates a region of the brain responsible for negative feelings.

Here is what writes about positive psychology our compatriot, Professor and doctor of science Alexander Poddjakov: "Positive psychologists or really have, or are trying to create in the reader's understanding of the world, friendship so much that they have no negative effects, anything worthy of attention. Nothing else to do but to do them, self-perfection and happiness. This mass of positive psychology in her version, developed primarily for the Western reader, respectively, and is only possible in a safe and secure society. Positive thinking who is unaware of the negative sides of life, especially good when, metaphorically speaking, behind you is the mother with machine".

Therefore, if the above mother with a machine behind your back is missing, it is somewhat more useful adequate perception of reality: when positive and sometimes not very. Denial does not solve the problem. No wonder the brain of a healthy person refuses "to live in the present, not looking back at the mistakes"...