Social Brain

Social Brain December 5, 2014

We think of other people as being, well, other, outside. Others might have some effects on the outer shell of the self, but not the hard core of me. At the very least, my physical self is my own.

Aristotle might have predicted that this isn’t true. And recent neuroscience has been confirming Aristotle’s claim that we are social beings, all the way down. As Diane Ackerman points out (The Human Age, 177-8), however, our social interactions affect us at a deep level. They alter the biochemistry of our brains: “A new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws is vigor from one of the great discoveries of our age: the brain is rewiring itself daily, and all relationships change the brain – but especially our most intimate bond, which foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions, and that ultimate souvenir, the self.”

Ackerman cites studies showing that “the same areas of the brain that register physical pain are active when someone feels brutalized by love. That’s why rejection hurts all over the body, but in no place you can point to. . . . Whether they speak Armenian or Mandarin, people around the world use the same images of physical pain to describe a broken heart, which they perceive as crushing, crippling, a real blow that hurts so bad they go all to pieces. It’s not just a metaphor for an emotional punch that is too shadowy to name. As our technology is beginning to reveal, social pain – rejection, the end of an affair, bereavement – can trigger the same sort of sensations as a stomachache or a broken bone.”

There’s good news too, though. Other studies have show that the pain of an electrical shock is lowered if the recipient of the pain is holding the hand of someone they love: “If you’re in a healthy relationship, holding your partner’s hand is enough to subdue your blood pressure, ease your response to stress, improve your health, and even soften physical pain.”

We are so social that “we’re able to dramatically alter one another’s physiology and neural functions.”


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