How eye contact prepares the brain to connect

Eye contact is a very powerful act that puts us in tune with another person. We knew this intuitively and now a study shows us what exactly happens in our brain when we look another person in the eyes for the first time.

We all know the power of eye contact with another human being. It is something very special that helps us transmit a lot of information and that, in turn, tells us a lot about the other person.. When we make eye contact with someone we are sharing an emotional and mental state.

Good friends only need a glance to communicate something. Getting lost in the eyes of your loved one is entering their world. Eye contact activates our social brain, our intentions and our emotions.

Now, a new study carried out with magnetic resonance imaging has revealed many data about what activates eye contact in our brain in real time and delayed. The first fact is that, When we make eye contact, we synchronize our blinking with the other person. But there is much more. Let’s see it.

Blinking on eye contact

It appears that eye contact activates the social brain and synchronizes the eye movements and blinking of two people looking into each other’s eyes. That is to saythere is a neural activation that reorganizes our response to other people.

Eye contact is one of the most prominent automatic mimicries. In addition, it is the way of telling the other that we are caring for them. Promotes social interaction and facilitates effective communication. Eye blinking expresses a cognitive load that projects the internal state of people.

Read Also: Strength in the face of adversity

Until now, brain imaging studies were only able to study the brain activity of a single person at a time. But Norihiro Sadato’s team at the National Institute of Physiological Sciences in Japan began working with a novel technique. known as hyperscanning.

The study

The results of this experiment show us What happens in the brain, in real time, when two people look into each other’s eyes for the first time. Hyperscanning has made it possible to look at two people’s brains at once, in separate fMRI machines, and have them communicate visually. In this study, Sadato’s team used 32 people, grouped in pairs, and put them in two fMRI machines at the same time.

The experiment could not be carried out with the subjects facing each other in person. because obtaining MRI images requires that individuals have to be inside a machine and remain completely still.

Each scanner was also equipped with a video screen and a camera. The participants did not know each other, so eye contact was completely new to all of them. Eye blinking was used as a marker of synchronization between participants.

The experiment measured the subjects’ brain activity in two different phases. In the first, they were shown a blank screen, and then shown the image of their experiment partner (whom they did not know).first in real time and then with a 20 second delay in the image. They were instructed to focus on what the other person was thinking, what their personality might be, or how they were feeling.

The results

Firstly, significant differences were detected in terms of brain activation between eye contact in real time and that produced with seconds of delay.

Read Also: Life is not measured by how many times you breathe but by the moments that leave you breathless.

During real time participants were more sensitive to each other’s blinks individual than in the images out of time. There was also greater connectivity in the limbic mirror system, greater activation in the cerebellum.

The study showed that eye contact prepares the social brain to develop empathy and that activates the same brain areas in both people at the same time. Activation of the cerebellum helps predict the sensory consequences of actions.

“Our findings suggest that perceptual-motor interaction occurs during eye contact without conscious awareness.”

-Norihiro Sadato-

The incredible capacity of our brain

The limbic system is associated with our ability to share and recognize emotions, which is essential for the emergence of empathy. It seems that There is a strong mutual influence between the blinks of both people when eye contact occurs.

This means that the contact visual prepares the social brain to share mental states from other people and is the basis for effective social communication. Finally, this study showed that Our brains distinguish between real-time images and recorded images in an absolutely unconscious way. A fact that is revealed to us as the most significant of all.