Every generation has its James Dean: the rebel who refuses to
follow the path beaten by their peers. Now, a new study in
‘Current Biology’ has found a link between the amount of grey
matter in one specific brain region and an individual’s
likelihood of conforming to social pressures. Individuals are
presented with many choices in life, from political alignments
to choosing which sandwich to eat for lunch. Their eventual
decisions can be influenced by the options chosen by those
around them. Although differences in individuals' tendencies to
conform to social pressures are commonly observed, no anatomical
measure has previously been linked to the likelihood of someone
conforming under the influence of their peers. Now, in research
funded by the Danish National Research Foundation and the
Wellcome Trust, scientists at New York University, Aarhus
University and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL
(University College London) have identified the first such
measure to predict how an individual will re