Linking Relationships and Physical Health
Research on the link between relationships and physical health has established that people with close interpersonal relationships recover more quickly from disease and live longer. And 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 has been that of "mirror neurons," brain cells that track the emotional flow, movement and even intentions of the person we are with, and replicate this sensed state in our own brain, offering a neural mechanism that allows the biology of one person to influence that of the other. John T. Cacioppo, at the University of Chicago, shows that, in short, your hostility bumps up another's blood pressure, your nurturing love lowers it, and vice versa: potentially, we are each other’s biological enemies or allies.
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