Washington (ddp). In a good conversation, the brains of the parties make a each other: the activity patterns are in speaker and listener almost completely identical – the listener puts the activity only with a few seconds delay, a team of US researchers has shown. There are two prerequisites for a successful brain power: the two parties must speak the same language, and it information must be provided in fact. This applies to the interlocutor use apparently both the same networks in the brain – and that both that’s language competent as well as for their understanding. Researchers to Greg Stephens from the Princeton University hope to be able to help people with communication problems, as they write in the journal «PNAS» thanks to their knowledge in the future (doi: 10.1078/pnas.1008662107).

The method for the researchers in their study decided – the functional magnetic resonance imaging – makes it impossible to the investigation of a real conversation because of the large equipment and huge noise. Therefore, they used a simplified call simulation: you could tell a subjects, the «speaker», a story of his life, and drew on his brain activity. Then they played before a record of this tale to another participant, the «audience», and also measured their brain activity. Then, they searched for temporal and spatial matching in the brains of the two subjects.

Actually found a very much larger coupling of the two brains than expected, the researchers report: not only hearing and language centre showed a from each other dependent activity patterns, but also such zones, which are responsible for higher cognitive functions. Most of these areas lit up here earlier in the course of the narrative in the speaker when the listener – an expected effect, because the listener must first organize Yes the sound stream into words and then decipher their meaning, explain the scientists. There were also exceptions: some few areas were active when the listener at a time, where they still weren’t working for the speaker.

This effect seems to play an important role in the understanding of language, because depending on the alignment in these areas was stronger, the better the listener had recorded what told the spokesman. Presumably these are therefore to a kind of prediction system, which prepares the brain for upcoming information. Interestingly also had been under the coupled areas to find, that are responsible for social aspects of communication, such as for the assessment of the emotional state of the other, the researchers explain. Also seem the mirror neurons system to have been involved in. This group of nerve cells is then active when even doing an activity, as even if you observed the same activity in someone else. Overall, you could say that a discussion quite obviously is a simple way to change the brain activity of a fellow man – so that it resembles strongly the own.