Friends Matter to Your Brain

¶ … friends matter to your brain" ( October 12th, 2010) is a simplistic treatment on the brain's reaction to recognizing friends as compared to neurological response when faced with strangers.

Fenna Krinen, graduate student at Harvard University, conducted a pioneering study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, about how the neural frontal midline reacted differently to friends than it did to strangers. Four different functional magnetic imaging experiments were conducted on a total of 98 participants, investigating the brain's response to strangers who had different interests from participants compared with strangers with common interests, and, secondly, how conclusions would compare to similar experiments repeated on friends.

Tasks that involved "strangers" invented biographies that, in particular aspects, matched resumes of the participants themselves, whilst biographies of other 'strangers' diverted from interests of participants. Participants viewed these biographies and photographs of these 'strangers', whilst imagery was conducted of their brain to assess patterns in neural activation. In the same manner, some participants viewed photos that they brought in of two friends and answered questions that dealt with how their friends would respond to certain queries. One of these friends was an individual whom the participant would consider similar to him / herself; the other one was someone whom the participant considered dissimilar. Again, neural activation was followed to assess whether the brain reacted similarly to friends as it did to strangers.

In both cases, researchers discovered that regardless of whether strangers shared common or dissimilar interests, the medial prefrontal and associated regions reacted differently to strangers than it did to friends. More specifically, increased blood oxygenation levels indicated increased neuronal activity when faced with friends. Krinen proposes further research, including investigation into how the brain responds to someone whom the participant has specific conflict with.

The article deals with a social issue. It seems to me patent that the author, working for a popular media outlet (CNN) chose an issue that has popular appeal. Friends and strangers are an issue that everyone from a child as young as six or seven (or younger) to an adult (particularly adolescent) would be interested in.

The article is written in an appealing manner, obviously slanted to a lay rather than professional audience. The vocabulary is simplistic; popular imagery is included (such as the TV show "The Newlywed Game"); technical terms are simplified; and explanation of related neurological material is excluded.

I find the article deceptive, even dangerous, in that it excludes essential details such as the characteristics of the 94 participants, the environment in which the study occurred, characteristics of friends and strangers, details about researcher and her assistants, qualities of the photographs, and so forth. All of these details, and more, are essential in assessing the reliability of the study.