* (AMBIENT ELECTRONIC MUSIC) The things we choose to do as humans are endlessly fascinating. Tonight, tens of thousands of people have come to a park to look at beautiful handmade lanterns. The best our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, ever managed was sitting in trees together. So why do we create rituals like this? Why do we choose to come together in such large groups? Is it just for the lanterns, or is it for each other? We spend most of our lives with other people. We think about them when we're not with them, and if we don't have enough people around us, we can become depressed. Our brain is an incredibly complex bit of kit, but scientists know that it spends a large amount of its time thinking about social networks ` about other people. And could that be the key to our success, the secret that's allowed our species to dominate the entire globe? In this episode, we'll find out how our brains connect with each other and what kind of things drag us apart. We'll find out what love actually is and just why it's so important to the human race that we connect with one another. Captions by Cameron Grigg Edited by James Brown www.able.co.nz Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018 This is a rat's brain. This is a cat's brain. And this belongs to an orangutan. And this is an actual human brain. It's the largest of all animal species as a proportion of body weight. Brain size tends to increase with body size across the animal kingdom. But if it was just about size, elephants would be four times smarter than we are. So how come we ended up with the largest cortex? Well, it turns out it has a lot to do with something we do that none of the other animals do. We know we need food, water, shelter. And so, when we're hungry, thirsty or cold, our brain automatically starts searching for solutions. But there's another thing that we need, too ` social contact. That in itself isn't unique, because there are lots of animals that live together in social groups. But there are no other animals that create the highly complex relationships we create. We've known each other for 20-odd years, and within that time, apart from playing bowls, we've been duck shooting and deer stalking. Oh, a bit of that. Fishing. (CHUCKLES) We both have the same sort of values, and so we enjoy each other's company. And we're always doing something together. Why are humans better in groups? Cos we're really smart. (LAUGHS) We've got all these abilities that other animals don't have. We can think about what other people are thinking, and we have not just that, but we can think about what other people think about other people, right? And there's a real kind of advantage in that, because we can start to really have these large groups that we co-ordinate with. That ability to be social beats out being fast, strong, ferocious, any of that, right? That socialness is what makes us really interesting as humans. This was just a picture of when we were at the Taj Mahal, and I think that's the seat that Diana sat on. There's photos of everyone sitting on that seat. And that was just Colin and I with the old Taj in the background. And we had some wonderful experiences on that ship, going around the world. I think there was about five women to every one bloke. (CHUCKLES) We had to play hard-to-get sometimes. (CHUCKLES) This idea of a social brain ` it's not just some nice, flouncy thing. It really is a social brain. Yeah! I mean, I'll grant you there's a lot of stuff in there that's necessary for breathing and digestion and whatever else there is, but, you know, really, that human bit, that stuff that's really unique to us, that huge neocortex that we have ` that's the thing that is so different from our primate ancestors, that's just so much bigger, and we see within that all of these kind of things that sort of seem to be related to this social monitor ` this thing that helps us kind of negotiate our social world. This intelligence ` solving novel problems, which are often very social problems that we have to solve. Yeah, you don't have many close friends, but I've always considered Colin a close friend, and we gel well together. (GIRLS LAUGH) By the time we're 10, our brains have spent almost 10,000 hours on social thinking ` thinking about other people's thoughts, feelings, and intentions and how we might relate to them. We're pretty much an expert. Freya ` she's usually always happy. But when she's sad, you can tell, cos she's always happy. (ALL LAUGH) Yeah. I never know if Abby's, like, happy or sad or confused. Yeah, she's really hard to read. She, like, hides her emotions. She's like... She's so hard to read. Like... The idea is that in our downtime, whenever we have a spare moment, our brain starts to think about other people. It uses every spare moment to get ready for what comes next, whether that's thinking about the birthday party you want to plan, the friends you need to catch up with, the family members you need to care for, or the people you want to impress at work. It promotes understanding, empathy and co-operation. And BabyX can help us understand exactly how our brains connect with one another. Created by scientist and two-time Oscar winner Dr Mark Sagar and his team, she can show us exactly what happens in our brain when we begin to connect with somebody else. We all know that making eye contact with other people is a powerful way to create a sense of connection. But why is that? Well, there's a chemical in your brain called oxytocin, 'the hug drug', which also has an amazing effect on how we connect with other people. If I set BabyX's oxytocin levels to 'very low', watch what happens. The green square shows where Baby X is looking. She doesn't seem to have any particular focus, and she's not really making any eye contact with me. And now I'm going to increase her levels of oxytocin, and let's see what effect that has. (COMPUTER BLEEPS) Now BabyX makes a clear shift to focus on eye contact. We're connecting, and she even gives me a smile. Inside BabyX's brain, we can see oxytocin being released. Here, it's the greeny-blue bits secreted by her pituitary gland. This simple act of connection means she's rewarded with oxytocin, which makes her seek even more connection. And even though I'm interacting with a digital baby, the same thing is happening inside my brain. Every day, I buy a cup of coffee and I get a hit of caffeine. But weirdly, I'm also getting a hit of dopamine from Anna, the person who makes my coffee. Flat white? Flat white would be lovely. Awesome. Alongside the oxytocin from eye contact, the dopamine from this small talk makes me feel happier. What about your weekend? Oh, you know. Usual stuff. 'We don't say much, but even a little exchange like this can make us feel better.' 'Can we get these feel good chemicals when we connect online?' Two billion of the world's population spend, on average, 14 minutes a day getting micro-connections by using Facebook. And that popularity is no accident, because Facebook has tapped in to the very thing that makes us tick ` people. Facebook makes us feel like we've got our loved ones around us because it gives us a dose of dopamine regardless of whether we're with the actual person or just looking at their picture. It feels like a real connection because, as far as our brains are concerned, it is. But how does connecting with complete strangers make us feel? Hello. Hi! How are you? Good. How are you? Good. In this experiment, we get two people that don't know each other to sit together on a bus ` something we usually try to avoid. We've given them some cards with suggestions on how to get to know each other better. 'Find something in common.' OK. Um... (LAUGHS) Were you born in New Zealand? No, I was born in China. Ah! So that's something in common. We weren't born here! Yeah! (BOTH LAUGH) At the moment, my cleaning music around the house is the, um,... the soundtrack from Hairspray. Yes! OK. (LAUGHS) I have definitely cleaned my house to Hairspray. Like, definitely! (LAUGHS) Oh, wow. 'An experience that changed your life.' Mine was probably really recently. I found out that I had a brain tumour, which was really not cool. Really scary. It's benign, which is great; which is awesome! Oh, thank... Jebus! But I was` yeah, it was right before exams, and it kind of, just, I guess, put everything in to perspective for me. It does, yeah. Our passengers show how readily we want to connect with other humans. (LAUGHS) 'Describe your first time in love.' Oh... I've got one word. OK. 'Train wreck.' Oh, no! (BOTH LAUGH) Met him on a camping trip in the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota, and I fell for him hard, but I don't think it was mutual. (BOTH LAUGH) 'Create your own special handshake.' I'm not the most co-ordinated of people. OK. (LAUGHS) Yeah, my daughter goes like this. She goes... This willingness to connect, form an evolutionary perspective, meant we could form larger, more co-operative groups. Wait, that way? That way. We're pretty weak and frail by ourselves. We're not fast, we don't fly, we can't burrow well, we can't climb trees well, we can't swim, we're not particularly ferocious. And so the thing that we have on our side, though, is our ability to co-ordinate action with other people, right? And so we can make a plan with lots of other people. This takes a lot of work, but we can do it because of that ability to be social. Bam. We need to blow it up in the end. Yeah, it has to. Every handshake has a blow-up. Jazz hands. (LAUGHS) Yeah! (BOTH LAUGH) It was nice to be able to talk to someone, you know? Cos often I don't. I just sit by myself and listen to music or something. I don't know why. It was just some` I felt like being very open and talking, which isn't necessarily something I would always do, especially with a complete stranger that I've just randomly met on a bus. It was cool. It's just` connecting with people is nice. It's clear connecting makes us feel good. We have the skill of empathy to make us better at connecting. But what exactly is empathy, and what is it that makes us cringe? * Our brains like to connect with other brains. We want to do it because it makes us feel good, but we need to do it because humans working together is what's allowed us to advance as a species. But what skills do we have to encourage this connection? Would a toddler help me to open this cupboard door, and if so, why? Well, it's all about empathy ` the ability to imagine what someone else is thinking or feeling, literally to read someone else's mind. But could a toddler do something as complex as mind reading? Can a toddler's brain make a prediction about what my brain wants to do, but can't? Can she empathise with me? (SIGHS) (REPEATED DOOR CLUNKING) (SIGHS) Hm. (BABBLES) Even toddlers have the ability to put themselves in other people's shoes. But what's the point of empathy? Well, understanding others means we can predict what the people around us might do next, because, if we understand how they feel, then we can predict what they might do. Empathy also means we can help each other out. Co-operation requires empathy, and it's this unparalleled ability to co-operate which has made humans so successful. Ah! Thank you! Scientists have speculated that one of the fundamental building blocks of empathy comes from specialised brain cells called mirror neurons. When you watch this dancer's feet, feet-dancing neurons in your brain start to fire. Even if you've never danced, your brain is literally feeling, to a small extent, what the dancer is feeling. And this is also what's happening when you cringe with embarrassment. Hey, so you're our guys? Hey. Yes. Yep. You are? Gen. Gen? Gen. Gen? G-E-N. 'This is hidden camera footage of me meeting the participants of one of our experiments.' Like, what's it short for? Genezy. How do you spell that? G-E-N-E-Z-Y. G-E... How do you pronounce it? Genezy. 'My handshake seems to be going on for quite a while.' So.. we've been, um... So you guys are doing an experiment later. 'And now some of you watching this are cringing, unable to watch.' 'Well, that's potentially mirror neurons at work.' 'You're physically responding to the situation playing out.' 'This empathy is stronger in some people than others.' 'Studies have shown that our brains process the breaking of social norms and the breaking of bones' 'through similar neural pathways, so watching this awkward handshake can actually activate parts of the brain 'associated with physical pain.' 'The more empathetic we are, the more we'll want to avoid these kinds of situations.' 'Instead, we'll create harmonious scenes which allow us all to get along and work together.' 'The handshake goes on for another minute.' Our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of others starts off young. Good guys and bad guys. It's a story as old as stories themselves. This is a very basic plot. We all see the yellow triangle helping out poor red circle. But there's also a bad guy ` the blue square. I'm going to show this drama to young babies. They'll watch the kind yellow triangle. (BABBLES) And then they'll see the big, blue meanie. And now, I'm going to offer them the two characters to see which one they want to pick up. 'Time after time, they select the helpful yellow character, which is amazing.' Oh, the yellow one's the nice one! Even when we switched the colours of the blocks for the experiment, the babies still chose the helpful character. This shows even very young babies are able to form a mental model of what the personality of the shape is like, to make predictions about how the shape is going to behave. (LAUGHS) You'd like the nice one. Very good! Connecting is vital to humans. And one of the most important relationships we'll ever have is with the people who look after us when we're the most vulnerable. To help us do that, we're hard-wired with this connection bias from the very beginning. Babies begin bonding with their mother's voice in the womb, and over the first few days of their lives, they quickly learn her smell, her face and the sound of her voice. For the mother, the bonding process is also very rapid and just as powerful. Given that the bond between Isla and her baby Indigo will be one of the most intense relationships of both of their lives, what does that powerful bond actually look like inside Isla's brain? To answer that question, we're going to conduct an experiment with Isla using an MRI machine, which lets us look inside her brain as she thinks about her baby. We can see parts of Isla's brain reacting as she looks at pictures of baby Indigo. A couple of things kind of stand out. The first is that it seems to involve regions that we know are important for, amongst other things, memory. You can see here, on this little blob in the posterior cingulate. There's a wealth of research showing that the insular is an important region for feelings of love and affection, both romantically and maternally. Previous research has shown that if you give people oxytocin intranasally, through their nose, and do an experiment very similar to this one, activity in this part of the brain increases quite a bit. Our brain rewards us with oxytocin when we see our baby, which we experience as love, And it's that desire to love and be loved which is one of the most powerful influences on all of our lives. But how is romantic love different from maternal love in our brain? MAN: Look around. As the Favourites come out, it begins. Working as the Dream team. Nice! Ah. The flirt. Classic! Cadbury Favourites. It's only a little bit over, mate. It's always just a little bit... until you're on the receiving end. One times gold-coloured necklace and pendant. She was alive when I got there. Maybe they'll find a few less K's would've saved her. Imagine having that on your shoulders. (ALARM BEEPS) Everyone thinks they drive well. (HELICOPTER WHIRRS OVERHEAD, INDISTINCT POLICE COMMS) But I've never seen anyone crash well. (WOMAN CRIES) FEMALE OFFICER: Is there anyone we can call for you, Mrs Woolford? (SOBS) MAN: Well, this speed's fine along here. I know these roads. I know these roads pretty well too. And I'm doing everything in my power to stop you from seeing the things I've seen on them. Can I see your driver's licence, thank you? * Vodafone TV has Sky, TVNZ, all in one place, bringing all your favourites together like never before. * (GENTLE PIANO MUSIC) The strongest social connection of all ` love ` is a fairly complex emotion. But it's the one thing millions of people around the world seek out every day. So what is love? And how do we know when we're in love? Neuroscientists have been asking these questions for decades, And we're beginning to get a better understanding of the science of love. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the mixology class. I'm going to be teaching you a few cocktails today. There are three stages of romantic love, and each stage contains a different cocktail of chemicals inside our brain. Stage one begins when we're attracted to someone. This doesn't happen in our cortex ` the thinking part of our brain. It's more basic than that, taking place in the mammalian and reptilian parts of the brain, where feelings like lust exist. This is Eric, and this is Amber. They're both young, single and looking for a new relationship. What'll happen when they see each other for the first time? There's a whole lot at play here, and it happens quickly ` things like assessing the symmetry of the other person's face and judgements about how they smell. And then there's personal preferences. Amber is attracted to a guy who takes care of himself and has his life together, and Eric is attracted to a woman who shows compassion towards others. And if that attraction occurs, your body language changes, the tone and speed of your voice changes, and you seek out ways to spend more time with that person. Eric seems really nice. Like, when I met him, he had a big smile on his face, and he can take a joke, and, um... yeah. He's funny ` like, good banter and stuff, you know? Yeah. Amber's got lovely hair and really nice eyes. Eric and Amber are clearly attracted to each other. He seems like a guy that I'd, like, want to get to know a bit more ` a bit deeper, I think. I'd definitely go on a second date with Amber. Perhaps they're ready to move to the next stage. After attraction comes passionate love. Matt, how would you describe love? The most common definition of love that people immediately think of, the most salient, is what we'd call 'passionate love' ` that immediate infatuation with someone, which is closely tied to the experience of falling in love. Passionate love is rooted most in the dopamine system. The dopamine system is the system in the brain that is all about craving, motivation, reward ` that's the same system that gets activated when you have chocolate and you get sugar and you want to eat more sugar because sugar is something your body needs to survive. This second stage is about the intense feelings at the beginning of a new relationship, but can last for years. Sandra loves this feeling. What does it feel like when you first start going out with someone? If you really like them, it's... yeah, it's just exciting and dangerous and uncertain and fun, and you just get a rush. The parts of the brain most heavily affected by the rush of romance are also the parts of the brain most heavily affected by addictive drugs like nicotine and cocaine. So, in some respects, we experience this intense early stage of love as a form of addiction. Do you feel like you're kind of addicted to that feeling ` that first kind of rush of romance? I think 'addicted' is too strong, but it's definitely something that I like and I enjoy, and, possibly, I look for, or I welcome in with open arms when it's there. So what actually ended up happening when... Sandra loves that feeling of passionate love, but what happens when the dopamine hits stop coming? Like, you just look around and think,... 'What was I doing?' And all those thoughts and feelings have gone away and you can't rationalise being with that person any more. The third stage of love, attachment, is all about oxytocin. Its nickname is 'the cuddle drug', and it's nowhere near as exciting as the rush of dopamine. Perhaps Sandra just doesn't want or need oxytocin. When I was in my early 20s, I was in a long, happy relationship, where those things were of value to me. But I think, now, at this age, I get the feelings of stability from other areas of my life, or other people, and the dopamine rush is the thing that I don't have, and that's why I enjoy it in relationships. If we do want to take a relationship further, even as far as getting married, that's stage three of love ` attachment. Which is love for a person where you're together and you trust one another and you rely on one another, and so attachment love is about you finding someone who you can navigate the world with. We feel more capable of taking on challenges when we have someone we think we can rely on ` when we have someone who is there for us. But that doesn't always mean marriage. This is 'Married' ` it was painted in 1896 by Walter Sadler, and it shows a couple married, but clearly no longer in love, if they ever were. At the time of this painting, the idea that our lives should be filled with happiness was a new and popular concept, including the notion that we should marry our true love. But the institution of marriage actually began around 4000 years earlier, and it had nothing to do with love. So marriage was all about strategic gain ` well, men's strategic gain. It was about power and money. Once we introduced love into the equation, then divorce rates skyrocketed. So why do our brains still want us to get married? By now, the brain has got used to all the dopamine from the passion phase, and one of two things happen next. We either break up to chase the next dose of dopamine, or we move on to phase three ` attachment. Our brain tells us to stay and commit to the person we've fallen in love with. One of the more traditional signs of commitment in a relationship is marriage. Justine and Mike have been together nine years and have decided to tie the knot. Why did you decide that you wanted to get married? Because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. Having all our family there, having both families joining, and probably a point in our life where, now, we're moving on to another stage where there'll be family and things like that in the future. Yeah, it's a step in the relationship. I don't think there was a moment. I think it just was kind of the next step. Like, we've been together for a while, we'd lived together, we knew we wanted to stay together and we wanted to have a family together, so marriage was just the next step, I guess. I don't think it's going to change anything in terms of the relationship. I believe it's an important process to go through. Those who move on to the attachment phase are having their brain flooded with oxytocin. It's not as exciting as dopamine, but it creates a sense of well-being and security, which acts as the glue for a long-term relationship. How have your feelings` how has it changed over that time? It's obviously got a lot stronger. So I guess in the beginning days it was more so about having fun and just having a friendship, but just a little bit more. And then, over time, the support for one another and watching each other grow has just gotten stronger, and so you'd like to celebrate your achievements with that person, and, you know, celebrate life, and the more memories, I guess, that you have together, the more the feeling sort of grows, and you just don't want to be without them. Has the feeling of love changed over that nine years? Well, the feeling of love has stayed the same. I think the values and things that attach to it have changed. As time went on, you start to respect them as you learn more about them. It just increased steadily and hasn't really stopped, to be honest. And the male gets an extra hormone at this stage ` vasopressin. This is a strong neurohormone that sees the male wanting to protect his partner. Do you feel protective towards Justine? I think, at the start of the relationship, there was definitely some physical protection. You're still young and fresh in a relationship, and people can be threats. (LAUGHS) But now it's more emotional. I don't like to see her hurt or upset or anything like that, So there is definitely a protective element there. It's just changed over time. And in a study of prairie voles, researchers found that vasopressin saw previously playboy voles turn into loving, monogamous voles. It makes sense for our brains to produce oxytocin and vasopressin because that makes us stick together, which, from an evolutionary perspective, gives our offspring a better chance of survival. The modern marriage is a physical manifestation of this stage. Under the shared influence of oxytocin, helped along by guys' vasopressin, we say to the world we're going to stick together forever. Maybe people who choose to break up every couple of years have a higher sensitivity to dopamine or higher levels of oxytocin. And those unfaithful males? Maybe they could learn from the prairie voles and find a way to increase their levels of vasopressin. Perhaps an extra glass of soy milk might do the trick. But how does our brain feel without love if it's unconnected to others? Unlimited broadband now with Vodafone TV Intro ` it's TV like never before. Switch to Vodafone and get Vodafone TV Intro and three months' free unlimited broadband. That's over $640 of value. Visit vodafone.co.nz to sign up. * Even though making connections with other brains is really important to our brain, it isn't always easy. People aren't all the same. And in a world with conflicting views and different personalities, it's easy to feel alone. So what happens for our brain when a connection doesn't occur? You don't have to be a scientist or a psychologist to know that being left out of something, even if it's something as trivial as passing a ball, feels bad. But here's the weird thing ` that hurtful feeling of being rejected socially has been crucially important to the survival of our species, and to demonstrate that, I've got a very famous, but slightly mean, experiment. We have two people who are in on this experiment, and the third has no idea. What will happen is that we begin with everyone passing the ball to each other. Then our two insiders pass the ball only to each other, excluding one person. How does that feel? Well, I'm a pretty awkward person anyway, so, pretty awkward, yeah. Right. So, like, it's quite an unpleasant feeling, right? Yes, it is. Yes. I was confused at first, because it was supposed to be the three of us, and then, yeah, it just got weirder. It's so horrible that we want to avoid it almost at all costs. I just wanted to feel like I was part of the team, but I didn't know how I could go about doing that. Hey. To avoid this feeling, we try to make ourselves fit in by being more agreeable and more open to compromise, which lowers our chances of rejection. We try to be likeable, which reduces conflict and allows us to live together in large groups, which, in turn, allows us to achieve big things. So being excluded from things like this, being socially excluded, it lights up the same parts of your brain that light up when you're in physical pain. Would you agree with that? Like, does it kind of feel like it's a really unpleasant feeling, being excluded? It is, especially when you're not expecting it, I guess. Yeah. Well, I suddenly felt, like, 'Oh, why aren't they passing it to me?' Like, what's going on? Yeah. It's, like, it feels really mean, right? Yes. But we can also feel this pain when we become isolated and alone. Helen took isolation to unheard-of levels. I lived on a coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific, 12,000km north of Rarotonga, for 17 years. There were only 200 people living there, and I was the only English-speaking person. What does loneliness feel like? Yeah, that whole feeling that you don't have anyone you can talk to. No one to share all your triumphs or your sadnesses. That, to me, is loneliness, and I think, along with loneliness comes fear. Frightened to step out. Frightened to show that you are that person with needs. Loneliness is a phenomenon... which can actually cause a lot of harm for humans. In fact, we now consider isolation and loneliness... as a mortality risk factor. So, in addition to smoking and not exercising, isolation and loneliness is a mortality factor. It increases our risk for dying early. Helen's isolation continued even when she returned to New Zealand. Didn't know anyone except my mum, so I stayed by myself. But I rode buses and looked at people and was fascinated with the society that I had left behind. But I still stayed on my own. Do you think that loneliness contributes to unhappiness? For most of us, connection is essential. I say 'most of us' because some of us, a very small percentage, are wired differently ` that they would rather be alone. But for most humans, since we're a social species, connection is crucial, not just for happiness, but for survival, for maintaining our health,... for procreation, reproducing,... as well as taking care of our children. What's the difference between isolation and loneliness? Loneliness occurs, I think, even when you're in the middle of a whole lot of people. You can still be lonely. To me, being lonely means, 'I wish there was someone here to talk to. 'I wish I could share my feelings with somebody.' That, to me, is loneliness. When we're isolated, when we're disconnected, the brain will naturally crave for more connection. It feels lonely so that the individual is mobilised to do something about that loneliness. That's why loneliness is painful, because it wants the individual to find connection. You've done some things to change that pattern of isolation. Dancing was the answer. I saw the pamphlet and thought, 'I'll just find out about it.' Came along to Feisty Feet, which is a group of women who dance together. What do you get from the dancing? Well, A) exercise; B) the women. We dance like no one's watching, and we're safe among ourselves. We are safe. For me, it was discovering that everybody else thinks the same or have had similar experiences and are open to share those experiences, which was something I hadn't realised. If the impact of loneliness is that it makes you feel kind of inward-facing and it shuts you down, how do you break through that to connect up with other people again? With great difficulty. With great difficulty. I had to fight myself to leave the house to come, you know, to the dancing. I had to get back in to the pattern of stepping out. It's really re-patterning my brain to be able to get out, I think. Connection,... showing care, being cared for,... it's what gives us meaning. Not the nice car, not the fat pay cheque. Not the nice shoes. They're superficial. They're temporary. But it's the connection that makes people feel that their life is meaningful. Every morning, I wake up and I say, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' I never really thought I'd ever meet people that I could relate to, not realising that, basically, you can almost relate to everybody if you open up. But I was too scared to open. (CRIES) BabyX is upset because she's been left alone. She's upset because being left alone actually feels painful to her, as it does to us all. But the good news is there's a very easy way to help her, and it's both ancient and very simple. With this screen, I can actually simulate stroking her arm. We all have specific receptors in our brain that are tuned to a soothing touch. It's what you do as a parent, right? If your kids are upset, then you stroke their arm and they feel better. We can even quantify it. Anything less than 10cm per second, our brain experiences as soothing. You can see BabyX responding. The touch sends signals to her brain, releasing oxytocin from these deeper brain structures. In particular, we can see her pituitary gland lighting up as it releases its stockpiles of stored oxytocin. It's simple ` physical connection makes us feel better. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) And that doesn't have to just be physical connection with one person. Sometimes we literally gather together in tribes with a common goal and a common culture. Because social rejection feels so unpleasant for our brains, they instinctively steer us towards in-groups. It could be that club you belong to, a clique at work, the political party that you support, or even our lawn bowls team. And we do this to help build a co-operative group of people that can create a society that will ensure our survival. We'll have more empathy for our in-group, and we'll see their point of view more easily, and they'll see ours. Being a part of this in-group makes us feel happier and connected. But what happens when you don't seem to fit in anywhere? (BIRDS CHIRP) (KIDS GIGGLE) (BOTH GASP) (FOOTSTEPS CRUNCH) Ohh! Thank you, Mrs Thompson! So if you just grab a seat there, we shouldn't be too long, and... 'This experiment is about how our brain really just wants us to fit in.' Four of these people are plants working for us. The fifth person just thinks they're waiting to be filmed. But our hidden cameras are already rolling. If our four plants do something, like put on a coat, will the fifth person conform? Do they want to feel part of the group? This participant obviously feels awkward, but not enough to conform yet. Again, it's awkward, but still no conforming. Another word scientists use for conforming is 'harmonising'. This participant puts the jacket on straight away. What was your first thought when you walked in? Well, it was a bit unusual, cos they were all sitting in a line and all doing the same thing ` like, just sitting straight. So I didn't know what to do, so I had to do the same thing. (INTRIGUING MUSIC) Why do you think it is that we do this? Well, I think it's cos people don't want to feel left out sometimes. And if you're around people and you're doing the wrong` like, different thing, you don't want to stand out too much. You just want to blend in. I think that's what happened to me here. (CHUCKLES) But what does this all mean for us as humans? Studies have shown that about a third of us will follow the group, even if that behaviour doesn't have any immediate benefit for us. Fitting in is more important than what the group is actually doing. These conformists are harmonising the group. Everyone feels connected in the pursuit of a goal. You just sat down, literally, and then they would start walking off. Like, 'are they rejecting me?' You know? I'm like, 'Do I have something on my face, or the way I speak, or anything?' Because they started doing stuff as a group, you started to try to figure out of if they wanted you, kind of, in their group or out of their group. Yes. Yes. I think it's the feeling of belonging, I would say, because once you belong somewhere, you feel included, I would say. Yeah, very included. Very, like, 'I am them too, and that's the majority.' For most of the history of our planet, fire was one of the most powerful and destructive forces in nature. (FLAMES CRACKLE) For millions of years, nothing could stand before it. Fire took anything and everything in its path. (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC) But humans changed all that. Because even though, as individuals, we're actually very weak, when we combine our amazing brains, with their incredible ability to work together with other brains, focusing on a single objective, we shifted the balance of power from nature to us. It was our unique ability as a species to combine a powerful brain with the powerful brains of those around us which elevated us above every other species. Teamwork has played the pivotal role in human history. And as is our way, we weren't just content to conquer fire; we domesticated it, we made it work for us. Lots of us find staring at a fire relaxing. One study even showed that seeing a fire and hearing it crackle can actually lower your blood pressure. But why does it do that? Well, the theory goes that the campfire was one of the first places that our ancestors experienced the sense of safety that comes with being part of a group. It's where we joined together to create something bigger than the individual. And that sense of connection changed everything. (CAMPERS CHATTER) Humans banding together and co-operating ` it's what's made us the most dominant species on Earth. It allowed us to create the incredibly complex world we now live in, and it's taken us from the campfire to the moon. It's one of the most important functions of the human brain ` connecting with other people, which is why our brain pushes us towards other brains. Because it knows that connecting with other humans is the single best thing that we have going for us. So when we do it, it rewards us and we feel complete. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2018