Scientists Can Turn Losers Into Winners With A Flip Of A Switch

Conventional wisdom has always taught people that winning takes dedication, conviction, and hard work. However, scientists recently discovered that it could also be as simple as flipping a switch in the brain. It’s a neat behavioral conditioning technique where those who have a meek or submissive disposition can be turned into more assertive personalities with a winner’s mindset.

In the paper published in Science, Chinese scientists explain how they were able to transform mice that displayed tendencies of “losers” into ones that had the traits of “winners”. It basically involves putting the rodents in a situation wherein they could display a more dominant act, which reinforces the part of the brain that aims for such results.

“Social dominance in mice depends on their history of winning in social contests,” the paper reads. “Zhou et al. found that this effect is mediated by neuronal projections from the thalamus to a brain region called the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Selective manipulation of synapses driven by this input revealed a causal relationship between circuit activity and mental effort–based dominance behavior. Thus, synapses in this pathway store the memory of previous winning or losing history.”

In a recent interview with The Guardian, lead researcher Hailan Hu from Zhejiang University noted how conditioning the mice to have an “Alpha” mindset also led to behaviors that lend support to that particular point of view. This behavioral conditioning method could potentially apply to humans as well.

“We stimulate this brain region and we can make lower ranked mice move up the social ladder,” Hu explained. “It’s not aggressiveness per se. It increases their perseverance, motivational drive, grit.”

As to how this could apply to people, most psychology experts agree that having a history of winning or being on a winning streak inevitably produces the effect of making organisms more assertive and confident. This applies to humans thanks to an obvious social structure.