No matter how hard you try, it’s often difficult to cheer yourself up from a funk just by thinking happy thoughts. But making yourself disgusted—that’s easy.
Researchers had already identified the part of the brain that activates when we feel grossed out—the anterior insula and adjacent frontal operculum, or IFO. But a Dutch study has found that even reading or thinking about something disgusting can cause the same region of the brain to light up.
