cingulate gyrus

...we found increased activation in brain regions [including...] posterior cingulate gyrus activation in post-therapy response to forgivability judgments. [...] Empathic and forgivability judgments activate specific regions of the human brain[....]

--First study to watch brain patterns when forgiving

Or to put it another way, the cingulate gyrus (a ridge in the brain that partly wraps around the corpus callosum) appears to be involved in making decisions about judging whether a person or action can be forgiven.

I was vaguely aware that "cingulate" was a word before, and I'm generally not posting here about words I've seen for a long time but didn't know the meaning of 'til now. And I'm certainly not going to post an entry for every anatomy term that I haven't seen before--even the brief Wikipedia entry for cingulate gyrus contains a dozen such words (including "fornicate gyrus," which isn't what it sounds like). But I thought it was interesting that there's a particular region of the brain associated with forgiveness.

I also thought it was interesting that various nonscientific articles refer to the region simply as the "cingulate," leaving out "gyrus." I can't tell whether that's accurate terminology or not; there are other parts of the brain whose names also include "cingulate," which is an adjective meaning (sez MW3) "having a girdle especially of transverse bands or markings."

Anyway, the other reason I thought it was worth mentioning here is that every time I see "cingulate" I think "Cingular." I wonder if the people who came up with that brand name were familiar with the term "cingulate," and if not, what led them to put a C at the beginning.

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