Best friends have exceptionally similar brain activity, suggesting relationships rely on how we ‘process the world’
“Our results suggest that friends process the
world around them in exceptionally similar ways,” said lead author
Carolyn Parkinson, director of the Computational Social Neuroscience Lab
at the University of California in Los Angeles.
Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to
compare which regions of the brain lit up as 42 volunteers watched short
clips from news reports, music videos, comedy skits and documentaries,
researchers were able to identify who among them were friends.
We are a social species and live our lives connected to everybody else
The closer the relationship, the more alike the
neural patterns in parts of the brain governing emotional response,
high-level reasoning and capacity to focus one’s attention.
“Friends had the most similar neural activity patterns, followed by friends-of-friends,” the authors said in a statement.
“You can predict who people are friends with just by looking at how their brains respond to the video clips.”
The 14 brief excerpts included journalists
debating whether US president at the time, Barack Obama, should use
humour in his speeches; a sentimental music video about a social outcast
with a facial deformity; a documentary about baby sloths in Costa Rica;
and scenes from a gay wedding.
Scientists long ago understood that “birds of a
feather flock together” when it comes to human social networks, with
people attracted more easily to those of the same age, physical
appearance and ethnic background, as well as other demographic
categories.
In the digital era, this tendency extends to social networks too, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications.
From an Darwinian perspective, evolutionary
psychologists argue, the “like-with-like” principle favour social
cohesion, empathy and frictionless collective action.
The relationships we forge with individuals who
are clearly different from us – not of our “tribe” – tend to be
practical, task-oriented and short-lived, research has shown.
One question not answered by the study is
whether we naturally gravitate towards people who see the world the way
we do, or whether similarity – including the way our brains light up –
springs from shared experience.
Most likely, it is a combination of the two.
“We are a social species and live our lives
connected to everybody else,” said senior author Thalia Wheatley, a
professor of psychology and brain science at Dartmouth University in
Massachusetts.
“If we want to understand how the human brain
works, then we need to understand how brains work in combination – how
minds shape each other.”
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