Are You a "People Person"? New Research Shows Why

Humans are social animals. But researchers at Cambridge University wanted to know why some of us are more "people persons" than others.

They used MRI to scan the brains of 41 males who'd completed a questionnaire designed to measure their emotional warmth and sociability. Those who were most social had greater concentrations of grey matter (brain-cell containing tissue) in the orbitofrontal cortex (the outer strip of the brain just above the eyes) and in the ventral striatum (located in the center of the brain).

It’s not clear that anatomical differences are a cause, rather than an effect, of social interactions. But the team concluded that some brains are simply better equipped to enjoy the company of others.

Previous research has shown that both areas play an important role in processing simple rewards such as sweet tastes or sexual stimuli.

"It's interesting that the degree to which we find social interaction rewarding relates to the structure of our brains in regions that are important for simple biological drives such as foods, sweet liquids and sex. Perhaps this gives us a clue to how complex features like sentimentality and affection evolved from structures that in lower animals originally were only important for basic biological survival processes," research leader Dr. Graham Murray, of the University of Cambridge in England, said in a Cambridge University news release.

"Sociability and emotional warmth are very complex features of our personality. This research helps us understand at a biological level why people differ in the degrees to which we express those traits," he said. However, Murray noted that this research is "only correlational and cross-sectional" and "cannot prove that brain structure determines personality. It could even be that your personality, through experience, helps in part to determine your brain structure."

The study appears in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Posted by Casey Kazan

Link: http://www.livescience.com/health/090526-social-brain.html

Comments

[Internists]

Now I know why I like strawberries, whipped cream and that cute little baby doll I'm always asking my wife to wear. It's because I'm a people person. Can't wait to tell her she's wrong.