Have you ever failed? Of course, you have we are all human! But that if you fail, do you try again? Most people don’t as they lose motivation and persistence. A study in Chicago featuring Jamil Bhanji was made to monitor people’s brains as they were playing an overly difficult game that made them fail. There are two ways a person can approach a failure, they can come in with a problem-focused approach or an emotions-focused approach. When a person used the problem-focused approach say, with a test it can result in them saying or thinking they can do better next time or that they will study harder next time. They don’t dwell on the failure and look ahead to see what they can do next time. When a person used the emotion-focused approach say, with a test, it can result in them feeling bad for themselves and maybe for their family to have to look at the test but they get a brighter side generally to the situation. Bhanji wanted to test his theories and see what type of strategies or wavelength the brain uses when faced with a challenge and failure. They gathered up 30 volunteers for the testing in a lab and had a computer game set up for them. The stimulation was not easy to pass and the volunteers were faced with many challenges such as passing a guessing exam. They had to guess the answers and get them all right to move on in the game. Many failed at doing so. Another challenge they faced was a course challenge. They had to move their character carefully and pass through. Many failed to pass this.

As the volunteers are doing the stimulation they were being monitored the whole time. specifically their brain. Bhanji and his team used a high tec fMRI. The functional magnetic resonance imaging calculates the highest and lowest times of blood flow. With an area with high blood flow, it means the brain is active. They then looked into what blood flows changed as the volunteer failed and went to try again. There finding were “They found that activity was reduced in some parts of the brain when players were tackling challenges. For instance, the ventral striatum sits deep in the skull and is important in motivation — such as whether to try again. Activity here dropped off when players brushed off a failure that had been within their control (such as guessing the wrong key and failing that so-called exam). The lower the activity in this brain region, the more likely a player was to give the game another go. Reduced activity in this area may not be pleasant, since it’s associated with getting something wrong. But it also is associated with learning. As they change their behavior, participants might begin to feel they can do better next time”(Brookshire). Another finding with the volunteers was “But when players were faced with a course cancellation — something they couldn’t control — the activity dropped in a different part of their brains. That part is located right above the eyes and is called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. This area affects how we judge risk, control our emotions and make decisions. And for uncontrollable setbacks, the lower the activity here, the more likely players were to not give up”(Brookshire).

It was later discovered that if we can get a grasp on our emotions responds and know exactly how we feel, it can increase the chance of trying again. Bhanji did another experiment but he stressed out his participants and came to know that when under stress it’s harder to control emotions and persevere.