You know that moment when you immediately click with someone and it feels like you’re definitely meant to be friends? It may not just be because you share the same elaborate coffee order and had a crush on the same boy band star in the 90s.
Fascinating new research shows that you and the people who become your close friends may actually have similar brain wave patterns.
In fact, according to the New York Times, the patterns charted in the study were so similar, researchers could predict the strength of participants’ social bonds based on brain scans alone.
The Research
To conduct the study, researchers had graduate students from the same class first fill out questionnaires in which they laid out who their friends were (on all different levels, from acquaintances to besties).
Then, 42 students watched all kinds of different videos while an fMRI device scanned their brains. When researchers analyzed the scans, they found that the closer participants were to each other, the closer their blood flow patterns (which are a measure of brain activity) matched.
“Our results suggest that friends might be similar in how they pay attention to and process the world around them,” the lead researcher told the Times.
In other words, they might have found a scientific basis for that inexplicable feeling of “just clicking” with someone. We’ve all had that feeling that our friendships are based on more than loving yoga classes and old episodes of The Office, but now, there’s some solid evidence.
Maybe a date with your best friend is in order, to discuss? We have a feeling she’ll be on the same wavelength.
(Featured Photo: Katie Treadway via Unsplash)
