It takes two: Brains come wired for cooperation, neuroscientist asserts

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/jhu-itt110311.php

Public release date: 3-Nov-2011
Contact: Lisa DeNike
Johns Hopkins University
It takes two: Brains come wired for cooperation, neuroscientist asserts

When Nancy Grace and her partner danced a lively rumba to Spandau Ballet's 1980's hit, "True," on a recent "Dancing with the Stars," more was going on in the legal commentator's brain than worry over a possible wardrobe malfunction.

Deep in Grace's cortex, millions of neurons were hard at work doing what they apparently had been built to do: act and react to partner Tristan MacManus's movements to create a pas de deux that had the dancers functioning together (for the most part) like a well-oiled machine.

That is because the brain was built for cooperative activity, whether it be dancing on a television reality show, constructing a skyscraper or working in an office, according to a study led by Johns Hopkins behavioral neuroscientist Eric Fortune and published in the Nov. 4 issue of the journal Science.

"What we learned is that when it comes to the brain and cooperation, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts," said Fortune, of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. "We found that the brain of each individual participant prefers the combined activity over his or her own part."


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