On the same wavelength
That's a real thing - it's not a metaphor
You know that feeling when you meet someone for the first time and you just “click”? You not only have a lot in common, but you just seem to think the same way. You almost know what they’re going to say next. As we often say, they’re “on the same wavelength”.
Well, according to neuroscientist Ben Rein, that’s pretty much true. People who establish close friendships tend to have similar structures in the areas of the brain that are responsible for social interaction.
So, if you really get on with someone, it might be that you have similar-looking or similar-working brains. The next time you find yourself laughing and enjoying someone’s company, pause to say, “Hey, I like how your brain works.”
The sci-fi hypothesis that explains why you click with certain people
But that’s not all. When you start getting to know someone well and you’re having a shared experience, your brains literally start to synchronize in weird ways.
“…if you were to have those two people in a brain scanner at the same time, they would be showing nearly identical patterns of brain activity in that moment.”
It’s called interbrain synchrony, and it’s probably something to do with encouraging teamwork and social support. When your brain is in sync with someone else’s, you can work faster and more effectively, and you can transfer information more efficiently and more accurately.
We’re not entirely sure how it happens, or why it happens sometimes and not others. It appears to be affected by things like mirroring (where you copy someone’s posture and movements), maintaining eye contact, and copying their speech patterns - all things that are taught to NLP practitioners as ways of getting into “rapport”.
So next time you say that someone is on the same wavelength, you may be quite literally correct.
I’m not a doctor, dietitian, nutritionist, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, meditation trainer, yoga teacher, or anything else. My academic background is in anthropology, and I’ve taken some neuroscience courses, but otherwise I’m self-educated. Nothing in this blog constitutes professional advice.