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Yes, that connection you feel is 100% verified by science. Here's how to know.
By Merethe Najjar — Written on Mar 02, 2018
You know the feeling. Songs have been sung about this moment; poems written, romantic movies acted out for this very thing: When you meet someone else's eyes and you just "click."
Though on the outside it's a simple meeting between two people, inside you know that it feels like angels chorusing around you. You can't stop smiling. You can instinctively tell that you're on "the same wavelength" with someone you've only just met. Or perhaps you're having a conversation with someone and you begin to feel like they must have felt, either overjoyed or crippled with shame, depending on what they're talking about.
You're doing more than putting yourself in their shoes — you're really, truly understanding where they're coming from.
This feeling is a weirdly intuitive sensation that usually leads you to believe that you'll get on well with the other person if you've just met them, or it can help you empathize and connect to someone you're speaking to. There's a long history of names for it, but whatever it's called, you just know.
You know you're on that person's wavelength, and they're on yours. You're sharing information without speaking, making a mental connection that you simply cannot explain. And according to science, your gut instinct is actually right, in this case.
If you've ever met another being that you felt "tuned in to" or connected on the same mental wavelength, guess what? It's not just pseudo-science after all. People have long claimed that each individual has the ability to cognitively be on the same mental plane as someone else, but it all sounded a bit like mystic hoo-ha until science finally said, "Well, OK... we're gonna have to let you guys have this one."
It's called "brain coupling," and yes, it really does exist. Perhaps not on Spock's mind meld level, but this is an actual, by-God, research-validated and measurable phenomenon.
Princeton University neuroscientist Uri Hasson took a look inside of people's brains with an fMRI machine while they engaged in everyday activities and held conversations. According to Princeton News, these studies revealed crucial knowledge about how your brain absorbs information over time and how you can actually connect, on a brain wave level, to another human being.
They discovered that during conversations when other people were telling stories to one another, the brain activity should have been distinctly different, as these were two separate functions: speaking, and listening. However, the activity in both people's heads were actually strikingly similar.
Even more interesting? The stronger the connection between the two, which was determined with a post-scan interview, the more their brains actually mirrored each other.
"The stronger the coupling between the speaker and the listener's brain responses, the better the understanding," said Hasson. "Sometimes when you speak with someone, you get the feeling that you cannot get through to them, and other times you know that you click. When you really understand each other, your brains become more similar in responses over time."
While there is still a lot that we don't understand about this functionality of our brains, it may open up its own can of worms for previously-determined pseudo-sciences to become real, honest "science." This might even begin to offer an explanation for many things that people don't fully understand, like gut instinct or even a person's ability to empathize with someone else on a deep, emotional level.
So next time you get a "good vibration" from someone, trust that instinct, because your brain really is telling you that there is a connection there.
For more on this phenomenon, check out the video below:
