Study Shows Brain Responds More To Close Friends

An anonymous reader writes "People's brains are more responsive to friends than to strangers, even if the stranger has more in common, according to a study in the Oct. 13 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers examined a brain region known to be involved in processing social information, and the results suggest that social alliances outweigh shared interests. In a study led by graduate student Fenna Krienen and senior author Randy Buckner, PhD, of Harvard University, researchers investigated how the medial prefrontal cortex and associated brain regions signal someone's value in a social situation. Previous work has shown that perceptions of others' beliefs guide social interactions. Krienen and her colleagues wondered whether these brain regions respond more to those we know, or to those with whom we share similar interests."

Comments

Re:Missing info

[MichaelKristopeit 23]

the researchers would have you believe those individuals are only your rivals and enemies because they are rivals and enemies of your shared alliances, or you have no common interests.

leave it to harvard students to ignore the concept of "dislike"

Re:Missing info

[Michael D Kristopeit]

sorry to have to break it to you, but there is an alliance devoted to defaming me. they stoop so low as to register users sharing my given name... such as "MichaelKristopeit 16" and "Mikey Kristopeity"... they post racial hatred in my name. they pool moderation points and down-mod all of my comments as "troll" or "off topic".

i'm glad some individuals like you still exist... but as i'm implying, and you're understanding, there are high power organizations that exist that refuse to acknowledge very obvious things... soon after they begin acting to silence those who would publicly acknowledge and broadcast such things.

slashdot = stagnated