Neural activity can even predict relationships. A new study has revealed that strangers are more likely to become friends if their brains respond similarly to movie excerpts.
Through cultures, humans tend to surround themselves from people with a similar mindset… unless they are.
The phenomenon known as homosexual explains why previous studies have found Neural similarities between great friends.
However, researchers are not sure if this phenomenon is due to the fact that friends become more similar over time or because people gravate to those with similar thinking processes.
Now, a new investigation has collected 41 students’ brain exams before starting a postgraduate program. During the exams, participants watched a series of 14 movie excerpts covering a range of styles such as documentary or comedy, and several topics including food, sport and science.
The researchers then analyzed the neural activity of each participant in 214 brain regions.
As detailed to, the participants who approached during this period had significantly greater similarities in the activity of 42 brain regions than those who have moved away.
The study, recently in the Nature Human Behaviourrevealed that the connection remained significant even after accounting factors such as age, gender and hometown.
“Sociodemographic factors, at least in terms of what we have been able to measure here, seem to explain part of the image only,” he told New Scientist the corresponding author of the study, Carolyn Parkinsonfrom the University of California.
Many of these regions are involved in brain networks that drive attention and help us make sense of stories, “suggesting that the friendships form, in part, due to similarities to how people understand the world around them“Says Parkinson.
“People whose thought processes are more similar find it easier to get along. When they say something, they just know what the other is thinking because that’s how they themselves think,” he confirms, to New Scientist, the expert Robin Dunbarat Oxford University.
Dunbar states that this study confirms what many have long suspected – “that Similar attract similarinstead of people thrown together for accidents approaching their features. ”
“In other words, close friends are born,“He concludes.
