We all have the power to influence the world

Published in Living Now Magazine August 2012

A little while ago I extolled the virtues of being a joyously and unapologetic delusional optimist. Now I'd like to share a little piece of research that recently came across my desk.

In 2010 three Princeton University Neuroscientists conducted a series of experiments¹ to explore the relationship between the brain activity of a person telling a story and those listening. Using fMRI machines they found that "Speaker and listener brain activity exhibits widespread coupling during communication." In other words - the brains of speaker and listener sync up...

Even more interesting is the fact that the speaker and listener weren't even in the same room - so you can rule out body language and non-verbal cues. Instead the speaker told her story and had her brain activity mapped. The listener then jumped into the fMRI machine and had their brain activity mapped whilst listening to the recording.

But wait - there's more - the experiments assumed that there would be a short lag between the brain a…