Discovering The Social Brain: How Your Neurons Are Taking Care Of Your Social Skills!

As many of you hopefully know, we humans are social creatures. Almost every aspect of your life is related to social interactions in one form or another. This makes sense when viewed from an evolutionary perspective; our caveman ancestors lived in an extremely harsh world, in which proper social interaction was essential for survival. Through evolutionary processes active over millions of years, the brain has literally become hard-wired for social interaction.

Due to the recent and very awesome developments of brain imaging technology, more and more is being revealed about your social brain; the reading of emotional cues on other's faces, the perception of deception, or the generation of empathy through the mirror-neuron system; all are crucial for proper social interaction. Moreover, neuroimaging techniques have revealed that all these processes, as well as many others, are processed automatically by specific neural circuits in the brain. Next time you're talking to that cute girl/guy on the street, be aware that your social brain is working hard to allow you to act normally!

However, as brain science is continuously evolving, so are the opportunities to improve social interactions. Drugs that improve social cognition are already on the market and being developed. Can you imagine a time when it is not a problem at all to take some supplements every morning before lunch to improve your social skills? These kind of brain supplements are still being researched, but the ethics and attitudes towards such supplements will have to be considered as well at some point!