on Oct 11th, 2006Relationships + Physical Health = Live Longer, Recover More Quickly
The ability of the human mind to figure things out that have life and death consequences never ceases to amaze me. With books like Emotional Intelligence sitting on the bookshelf, which fall into that soft science category, it’s nice to see that hard science in fact bears out some of the conclusions. Friends and family are the key to longevity.
Research on the link between relationships and physical health has established that people with rich personal networks — who are married, have close family and friends, are active in social and religious groups — recover more quickly from disease and live longer. But now the emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of how people’s brains entrain as they interact, adds a missing piece to that data.
The most significant finding was the discovery of “mirror neurons,” a widely dispersed class of brain cells that operate like neural WiFi. Mirror neurons track the emotional flow, movement and even intentions of the person we are with, and replicate this sensed state in our own brain by stirring in our brain the same areas active in the other person.
Friends for Life: An Emerging Biology of Emotional Healing
By DANIEL GOLEMAN
New York Times, October 10, 2006