杏吧原创

There鈥檚 now scientific backing for the old adage that when two people 鈥渃lick鈥� in conversation, they have a meeting of minds. The evidence comes from fMRI scans of 11 people鈥檚 brains as they listened to a woman recounting a story.

The scans showed that the listeners鈥� brain patterns tracked those of the storyteller almost exactly, though trailed 1 to 3 seconds behind. But in some listeners, brain patterns even preceded those of the storyteller.

鈥淲e found that the participants鈥� brains became intimately coupled during the course of the 鈥榗onversation鈥�, with the responses in the listener鈥檚 brain mirroring those in the speaker鈥檚,鈥� says Uri Hasson of Princeton University.

Hasson鈥檚 team monitored the strength of this coupling by measuring the extent of the pattern overlap. Listeners with the best overlap were also judged to be the best at retelling the tale. 鈥淭he more similar our brain patterns during a conversation, the better we understand each other,鈥� Hasson concludes.

There was no match between the brain patterns of the storyteller and the listeners, however, when they heard the same story in Russian, which they could not understand.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1008662107