31/07/2025
When I was training to become a solution-focused hypnotherapist, my tutor and friend Claire Noyelle gave me a book that’s stayed with me ever since: The Brain: The Story of You by David Eagleman.
Out of all the textbooks and papers I read during that time, this one kept resurfacing—not because it offers advice, but because it’s fascinating. It’s clear, clever, and endlessly relevant. Bits of it still sneak their way into my sessions and into my Neuroscience Now! chats.
Today I want to share one of my favourite ideas from it—just because it falls into the “this is really cool” category.
🧠 Let’s start with this: There are roughly eight billion brains in the world. And even though we all feel like self-contained individuals, our brains are constantly in conversation with other brains.
For a long time, neuroscience treated the brain as a solo act. But that misses something vital: we are deeply social creatures. A huge amount of brain real estate is devoted to tracking, understanding, and responding to other people.
This is what social neuroscience explores. And once you dive into it, it’s hard to unsee.
Ever found yourself emotionally invested in a cartoon car? Or cried over a toy in a film? That’s your social brain at work. We’re wired to see personality, motivation, even morality, in things as simple as shapes on a screen.
Psychologists once ran a study where people watched animated shapes—triangles and circles chasing each other. And people didn’t just see geometry. They saw stories. A villain. A hero. A rescue. We can’t help but narrate what we see. It’s how our brains are built.
Here’s another gem from Eagleman: Researchers showed puppet shows to babies under a year old. One bear helps a duck open a box. Another bear slams the lid shut. When offered the puppets, the babies overwhelmingly chose the helper bear.
They couldn’t talk. They couldn’t walk. But they were already wired to prefer kindness. That early social wiring runs deep.
And it doesn’t stop with childhood. As adults, we pick up on subtle social cues: a flicker of the eyes, tone of voice, the tiniest facial twitch. In one study, people unknowingly mirrored facial expressions they saw—even with no conscious effort. We do this constantly. It’s part of how we feel what others feel.
Now here’s the twist: People with Botox (which freezes facial muscles) weren’t just harder to read—they also struggled to interpret others’ emotions. Because when your own face can’t mirror someone, your brain gets less feedback. That unconscious mimicry? It matters.
💬 And now, a personal note.
As someone with autism, I’ve often found this side of communication more challenging. Reading faces and tone didn’t come naturally. So, in my late teens, while working behind a bar, I started watching. Intentionally. Studying expressions, rhythms, movements.
It was my way of learning to “read” people—through conscious effort rather than intuition.
There are theories about how autism affects the social brain, and mirror neuron differences are one area of interest. But let’s be clear: this isn’t about broken systems or deficiencies. Just differences. Many of us learn to connect in our own way.
Some people have incredibly sensitive “social antennas.” We often call them empathic. It’s not magic—it’s brain wiring. But all of us, empathic or not, have the capacity to tune into others. Whether it’s instinctive or something you’ve built piece by piece like I did.
And that ability to connect—to truly resonate with another human being—is one of the most extraordinary things about being human.
Thanks for hanging out in my brain bubble for a bit.
Until next time—stay curious. 🧠💬✨
