Our Brains React Similarly To Strong Emotional States

It's common knowledge that one person yawning causes others around them to yawn. But our abilities to become 'synched' with each other may go even deeper than that. Researchers have found people's brains "tick together" when they are exposed to strong emotions.

The tendency to process an emotion in a similar fashion goes both ways. Both unpleasant and pleasant feelings evoked similar brain activities from participants in the study, showing us a nuanced way our brains promote social interaction.

"The results have major implications for current neural models of human emotions and group behavior. It also deepens our understanding of mental disorders involving abnormal socioemotional processing," says Adjunct Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from the Aalto University, Finland where the study originated.

Events that are highly arousing tend to stimulate the areas of the brain concerning attention, vision, and touch. Unpleasant events on the other hand seem to activate the frontal and midline regions, which are concerned with the processing of emotions.

The study shows us an important characteristic of human social behavior - that we are subconsciously linked to each other in far more subtle ways that we realize. An experience becomes something that is shared collectively because we even react chemically the same way as others in the same position. As the study says, "Sharing others' emotional states may facilitate understanding their intentions and actions."

To determine these results, the researchers at Aalto University and Turku PET Center measured the brain activities of the participants using functional magnetic resonance while they were viewing short pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant movies.