Scientific Reports: How the brain adapts quickly to other people's opinions

We often change our beliefs under the influence of others.
this social behavior is called obedicisity, from fashion trends to voting, more or less such behavior.
scientists at HSE University, Russia's top academic institution of economics, have learned that disagreeing with others leaves a "mark" in brain activity, allowing the brain to adjust its opinions later to support most people's views.
this article was published in Scientific Reports.
study fully illustrates the short-term impact of social impacts on decision-making.
If our choices are consistent with those of people who are important to us, this decision is strengthened in the brain's "happiness" center, involving a larger dopamine energy system responsible for learning, motor activity, and many other functions.
, the brain sends "wrong" signals and triggers obediency when it disagrees with others.
, however, after we formed our views and learned what others were holding, there was little research on how social influences affected brain activity over time.
HSE neuroscientist decides whether studying other people's opinions causes long-term changes in brain activity.
scientists used a brain magnetogram (MEG), a unique method that provides detailed information about the brain's activity during information processing at a longer resolution than traditional fMRIs.
the experiment began, 20 female participants rated how much they trusted strangers, their faces depicted in a series of photographs.
, they were told about a large group of peers' collective opinions about whether to trust the strangers.
sometimes the collective opinion contradicts and sometimes coincides with the opinions of the participants.
half an hour, the subjects were asked to reassess their trust in the same stranger.
and disagree with most people's long-term effects on MEG.
ERF, black line: conflict-free test, red line: conflict test.
indicates that there is a significant difference between conflict and conflict-free experiments found during the interval.
(B) MEG logo is consistent or different from most in the sensor space (ERF in conflict test minus ERF in conflict-free test).
specification of the average event-related field map and plane gradient (GRAD) of a magnetic magnetometer (MAG).
(C) MEG, which agrees with and disagrees with most people, showed that participants changed their perceptions of strangers in about half of the cases under the influence of their peers.
, their brain activity has changed, with scientists discovering "traces" of past in disagrees with their peers.
when subjects saw strangers' faces again, their brains signaled in a flash that their personal opinions lastly did not match those given by their peers.
most likely, the fixation of this signal allows the brain to predict possible future conflicts due to differences in order to avoid conflict, which is likely to occur subconsciously. Aleksei Gorin, a doctoral student at
HSE University, said areas such as the upper end of the cortical layer, the area of the brain responsible for retrieving memories, are involved in coding signals of disagreement between the past and the group, and the faces of strangers with differences of opinion are likely to be remembered more clearly than others.
, other people's opinions not only affect our behavior, but also cause long-term changes in the way our brains work.
clearly, the brain not only adapts quickly to the opinions of others, but also begins to perceive information through the eyes of the majority to avoid future social conflicts.
, a professor at HSE University and one of the study's authors, said the study showed that other people's opinions have a huge impact on the way we perceive information.
we live in social groups, we automatically adjust our opinions to the opinions of the majority, and the opinions of our peers change the way our brains process information over a relatively long period of time.
Taken into account, with the development of medical technology, using modern neural mapping methods, the brain sees traces of past conflicts with group opinions in brain activity, and the brain absorbs the opinions of others like a sponge and adjusts its functions according to the opinions of social groups.