How Hot Am I? =D

Headphones are without a doubt one of the propellors of modern personal entertainment. The idea of having your own personal stereo that, for one is just for your ears, and two, tunes out all the distractions around you, is quite an appealing one. I personally own several sets, each with a specific purpose (and price-tag) depending on where and why I’m using it. I’m a fan of headphones, but for those who aren’t, plenty of less obtrusive devices exist and are used, such as earphones of course, and the recent fad of earbuds, which are inserted deep into the ear canal. I hate earbuds, they’re annoying, though they’re just as efficient, if not more so than headphones, at doing something: isolating us.

Others become mere obstacles, in this "urban trance" we become under

The importance of our social lives and interactions are often left for the non-scientific world to tackle and as a result, the field has garnered skepticism and led to it not being taken seriously. But, day after day, the impact of our interactions with others around us becomes clearer. The brain, the most complex object in the universe and our least-understood system,is made to interact with other brains like it. In fact, it does so without us even catching on until after the deed is done and connection established .

That sounds sort of sketchy, and maybe not something you’d expect me to be saying, but the evidence is overwhelming and I’m fascinated with this field of social neuroscience that seems to be so integral in who we are and how we behave, feel, think, plan, decide and so much more.

Emotions were poorly understood processes and considered worlds and universes apart from our physiological states. That is as far as possible from the truth, with research and evidence in the past decade indicating that apart from altering our physiological states, emotions can even alter our immune system’s response. Talk about “giving up on life” and actually dying when sick. Depression and sadness trigger the release of certain blood-borne substances (stress hormones) that can hamper the gene expression of immune system cells and components. Some bacteria and viruses are known to trigger mood disorders in patients, with obsessive compulsive behavior, depression and even mania being directly linked to certain microorganism infections. So, the science of emotions actually is a science that intertwines with our biology, and systems once thought alien, such as the immune and nervous systems, are in fact very much in tune.

If you haven’t read my article on mirror neurons, you might want to do that now. Here, I’d like to mention a remarkable study of a stroke victim, whose eyes and optical nerves were perfectly intact, but the link between the optical nerves and the occipital lobe (at the back of the brain where stimuli from the eyes are translated into images) had been lost. So, the cameras were working, but the HDMI cable wasn’t connected to the TV. Researchers then showed the man photos of either angry or happy individuals while the patient was in an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows oxygen-consumption in the brain in realtime). The surprising result was that the brain regions of the patient corresponded with the ones that would’ve been stimulated if the person himself was feeling those emotions. Now, the fact that mirror neurons imitate emotions and brain states of people we observe, even if we weren’t under the same stresses or circumstances, is not new. However, the fact that a “blind” man could also activate his mirror neuron system (MNS) in tandem with photos shown to him, proves that our brain bypasses the occipital lobe for that matter, and goes straight to the amygdala (almond-like region involved in emotions), prepping us to better understand the state of the person in front of us before we ever engage in conversation or more in-depth observation.

In other words, you don’t need to see a smile, frown or long face to calculate consciously the state of another person, your brain primes itself before you can even assemble the image in your occipital lobe or before talking to the person and assessing his emotional state verbally. In fact, you don’t even need to translate the visual stimuli into images for you to pick up on the mood. This illustrates the intricate systems and mechanisms that our brains have developed over time for our social intelligence capabilities.

However, when we are faced with such evidence, we often also hear of stories of incomprehensible and unbelievable cases where humans show zero emotion, total disregard and even fatal negligence of other people’s states or emotions. Our increased tolerance to other people’s emotions, and more importantly misfortunes, is due to many things. One of them is probably our new urban lifestyles. Each day, you and I encounter dozens if not hundreds or thousands of people in our daily commutes, classes or work. Maybe as a child, you would have stopped and probed “why” when you saw a homeless person or beggar. Today, I’d pass through Bliss Street, and I probably wouldn’t grant them a glance. Everyone else seems to do so too, and the unlucky few who fall into their gaze, are often compelled to hand them some spare change. It’s not that I’m an inconsiderate ass, it’s that there are too many homeless people in my every day life to be able to dedicate enough attention and connect with them all. The controversy and rumors surrounding those people also works against them when it comes to acknowledgment and connection. But it’s not just homeless people that get that cold shoulder, everyone else does too, with people maneuvering around me just as I do around them, unless of course I know them or have a class with them, in which case it depends on the person and how close we are.

This connecting is one we often try to repress, that’s because it is overwhelming in our crowded modern environments, and we’d rather treat others as mere obstacles in our way to work or class. With our headphones on, we have an excuse to merely walk around someone in need or someone seeking to engage us or talk to us. This has reached a point where smiling at a stranger, or initiating friendly conversation is frowned upon or questioned for ulterior motives, and it often is tainted with such motives, with the amicable and unsolicited connector needing a pen or your wifi-connected laptop.

Now, I’m not asking for a hippie-style love-fest of emotional expression with complete strangers, for most of them are indeed too stupid or not worth your time. However, consider these few scenarios which I’m pretty sure you never gave a second thought to.

If your waiter is smiling and has a positive tone to his or her voice. You will spend your meal talking about how nice he or she was, and how the service is good and the place is awesome. That simple smile and tiny bit of happiness in a voice is incredibly contagious. Unfortunately, this is not the only contagious emotion, with the negative ones being just as contagious or even more so. For example, a pompous bouncer who treats you like scum and gives you a hard time going into a club will probably ruin your evening there, even if the drinks, music, friends and atmosphere are just perfect inside.

So, emotions are surprisingly contagious, and I’ve began to experiment with that in my daily life. Try to smile at someone you don’t know and observe their reaction. My trials have seen them split between genuinely uneasy, confused and often embarrassed smiles back. How unfortunate. If I’m upset or angry on my way to pick up a friend, my voice’s innotation will mean the world to our outing or plans. My anger will be immediately detected, even before actually addressing it, and thus spoil our meeting. The complete opposite can happen too, and that’s what I’ve tried as well. After going to the airport to pick up a friend, I had quarreled with the insufferable police officer there several times. He was writing up a fine, and I wasn’t able to reach my friend’s mobile, which it turns out she forgot abroad. It was also pouring rain. You can imagine my frustration, but as soon as I spotted her, I gave her a big smile and spoke in a very upbeat manner. Seconds later, she was too.

As with many things in life, I fail to appreciate them fully until I understand, or at least begin to understand, how they work scientifically, more specifically biologically and even more specifically neurologically. I’m happier now, and I make those around me happier too. What I would’ve dismissed as silly self-help fodder, is now a scientifically-explainable phenomenon, which I plan to exploit fully, and advise you to do too.

So, don’t isolate yourself with a pair of headphones. Interact with people, spread the contagion you want and do what our cognitive brains have evolved to do: connect.

Hopefully, I’ll write more about this fascinating branch of social neuroscience, depending whether or not you guys find it as interesting as I do.