As well the brain functions of the timid

Agatha Christie had a permanent fear to be interviewed and appear in public. And the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was a shy consummated until age 42 that sent his friend Oliver Girondo to read his speeches. Romantics were also Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, the inventor Orville Wright or writer Raymond Carver.

Now a team of scientists has shown that shy people perceive the world differently and show a stronger brain activity to certain stimuli. Researchers at Stony Brook University in New York, Southeast University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences selected 16 people and asked them to confront two portraits similar to observe the details. Meanwhile, examined their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Shy people spent more time looking at the images and "showed high activity in brain areas concerned with visual and sensory perceptions associate". In short, "the brain not only dealt with the visual perception, but was activated for further elaboration of the information," explained the researchers, who released their findings in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

According conclude, the brains of shy people perceive the outside world differently because of the "sensitivity to sensory perception" (SPS). This trait is characterized by sensitivity to internal and external stimuli, including social and emotional, and implies a predisposition to shyness could affect 6% of the world population. This type of subjects, the study authors added, needs more time to observe and reflect before acting. And normally bothered by the noise and the crowds more than the average, are more sensitive to caffeine and startle easily, all side effects of their innate tendency to pay more attention to detail.