Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Eye on brain's 'cheerleader'

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta

(CNN) -- Researchers say they might know what makes some people overachievers and others bystanders in their lives.

CNN Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta discussed the findings of Science magazine Tuesday with CNN anchor Paula Zahn.

ZAHN: If you have an addictive personality, or you are a little obsessive, you might have what some researchers are calling an overactive cheerleader in your brain. But if you feel unmotivated, your cheerleader could be lying down on the job. Here to explain all this is CNN medical correspondent, and a neurosurgeon, I might add, so he gets this stuff, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. ...

I never could do a cartwheel, so I was thrilled to hear that I have some semblance of a cheerleader in my head on a good day.

GUPTA: Are there any obsessive people up there in New York, Paula?

ZAHN: Oh, no, no, no. They're all great. They're calm, reasonable, thoughtful and the adjectives could go on and on and on.

GUPTA: Right, just like in the South, but there might be a reason now, as researchers from Science magazine point out -- why some people might be more obsessive, why some people just may be motivated and why some people absolutely might be just not motivated at all.

It is really, really cool stuff. You look at the brain and look at the fact we can measure thoughts in various parts of the brain now, using these fancy imaging techniques.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO CNN Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, explains an animation of neurons firing in the brain Play video

Let's look at an animation that actually shows how the brain would actually work. Here you see a neuron, and this is an example of a neuron that you'll find millions, billions of them all throughout your brain.

Now what happens is, in people that are motivated vs. not motivated vs. addictive, things like that, or obsessive, you'll have more of these neurons firing in various parts of your brain. They've actually been able to measure this in monkeys and are trying to extrapolate some of those results in human beings.

Scientists are finding one area of the brain responsible for addictive personalities and other disorders.

Let me show you here on a model of a brain. This is a brain here. And that's the side of it. Then you actually turn it on the inside, and it's actually this part of the brain here, which is -- the name of that area is not that important, but this whole area of the brain they're finding is more and more responsible for things like obsessive compulsive disorder, things like addictive personalities, motivation or lack of motivation.

And what is more interesting is that they can actually find out in some people more of those neurons fired than in other people, so they can actually predict who might actually get out of bed easier, who might take a little longer or on the bad side of things, who might actually have a hard time with obsessive -- obsessions or compulsions or even addictions.