Airt and Shyness Clinic on Repubblica.it 
Following the article published on
Blog Shyness Clinic, journalist Sara
Ficocelli wrote an article on this subject;
interview with Dr. Walter La Gatta . We thank Dr.
Ficocelli for the interest paid to our business and we report the full article, which can also be consulted directly on
Republic.
RESEARCH
The timid think deeper. Nietzsche and Marx are proof
Sara Ficocelli
The brains of shy people perceive the outside world in a different way than is the case for those outgoing. It is activated for a deeper processing of inputs. The U.S. maintains a research
Cheeks turn red, embarrassed attitude, difficulty in making friends: shyness is not just a veneer covering of mystery and delicacy of our actions, but a characteristic that can affect the social life so disabling. Researchers at Stony Brook University in New York, University of the South East and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have analyzed the mechanisms that regulate the introversion and found that the brains of shy people perceive the outside world in a different way than happens to those outgoing.
"Sensitivity to Sensory Perception - SPS" This is the personality trait that leads to the 5-6 per cent of world population to behave in a neurotic or even inhibited, and this is because people are born with this predisposition is more sensitive to the input of the average of the outside world, and he needs more time to make decisions and reflect. Those "highly sensitive" are more conscientious, easily bored with the chatter and show these features from an early age. The shy children are in fact "slow to warm up" in social situations, they cry the first rebuke, ask questions and have unusual thoughts too deep for their age. As adults, we pay more attention to detail and, when processing visual information, show brain activity more intense than those that do not have the "SPS". Who is so, the researchers said, in short, every experience lives with greater intensity and pays the price for this double sensibility with a genetic intolerance to noise, pain, caffeine, or to anything that could potentially undermine the balance of the nervous system.
In reaching these conclusions, scholars have used a group of volunteers by sending them a questionnaire to differentiate between more and less sensitive. Subsequently, 16 participants were asked to compare two similar cartoons and observe all the details, while the brain of each was examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Shy people have noted the differences between them for a longer time than extroverts and showed high activity in brain areas involved in associating visual and sensory perceptions. Their brains just not simply developed visual perception, but it has enabled a deeper processing of inputs.
This feature of personality is found in over 100 different animal species, from fruit flies to primates, which, according to scientists, would be the light of an evolutionary advantage. This is one of the reasons why biologists have begun to consider the hypothesis that, within the same species, there are not a but winning two personalities: the sensitive type, which represents a minority and chose to think longer before acting, and one able to go beyond all limits. The strategy of the shy person is not advantageous when resources are abundant or need to take action fast and aggressive, but is useful in situations of danger, when it is more difficult to choose between two opportunities and you need a very cautious approach and intelligent.
"Shyness is definitely a problem in modern society - explains the psychologist Walter La Gatta, dell'AIRT President, Italian Association for Research on Shyness - because who is receiving so many more details and needs time to process them. Time, which often do not offer the modern rhythms. But let's not forget that people are very shy as intelligent and sensitive, so this feature is certainly an asset. "
Not many, however, to think so. According to an online survey conducted by the same psychologist and his associate Julian Proietti (author of "Shyness. know it and overcome it," ed. Xenia), 68 percent of shyness is seen as a limitation in the round, both in terms of career development of social, while 14 percent of Italians consider it even a disease. Only 2 percent of the total states to experience this condition as a privilege, and truly sick of shyness "are 13 per cent of people.
"Consider introversion as a limit is a big mistake," says psychiatrist psychoanalyst Anepeta Louis, president of the Italian League for the Protection of the Rights of the introvert (SHORES). The author of "timid, docile and fierce. Manual to understand and accept the values \u200b\u200band limits dell'introversione (their own or another)," says that 60 percent of the most brilliant of all time, from Nietzsche to Marx, They were withdrawn and that this condition is a way of being like any other, "indeed - he concludes - is a condition that greatly enriched. Unfortunately, the modern world has decided to enhance the extroversion and marginalizing the other. E 'is the only problem. "
(April 8, 2010)
The conference, organized by Airt, in collaboration with the Shyness Clinic, held in Ancona 
