BRAIN’S NEURAL RESPONSES CAN PREDICT WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE

A study out of Dartmouth in the UK has found that friends have similar neural responses to real-world stimuli like watching video clips. And these similarities can help predict who would make a great friend or help someone predict who your friends are. The study also found that we share some similarities in neural patterns with friends of friends as well. Published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’, the study is the first of its kind, linking brain patterns with real-life social networks. This research tells us that, when we meet someone we know, our brain immediately lets us know how important they are to us and what position they hold in our social life. The next step in this research will be to find out if we’re naturally attracted to people who view the world pretty much the way we do ourselves.