Visiting family warps your brain, study says

[IDemo]

Research may even help explain why our relatives can drive us nuts

By Jennifer Viegas
updated 1 hour, 5 minutes ago

Visiting — or even just viewing photos of family members — prompts brain activity that affects how you feel about them, your friends, and even yourself, a new study suggests.

The study is the first to compare brain activity associated with seeing relatives with that linked to seeing friends and strangers. It suggests our feelings about biological relatives are at least somewhat primal.

The findings may help explain everything from why our family can get on our nerves to why people who look like us can spark immediate feelings of trust, "but not lust," said Steven Platek, who co-authored the study with Shelly Kemp.

"We like to be around people that look more like us, but we do not find them as sexually attractive," added Platek, editor-in-chief of the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. "I think it is linked to our subconscious ability to detect facial resemblances so we avoid lusting after those that may be related to us."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28423178/

[Turbineguy]

1. They needed a study for that?

It should be, as the calculus book says, "intuitively obvious".

[IDemo]

2. The study may not apply to some parts of Utah and the deep South

"I think it is linked to our subconscious ability to detect facial resemblances so we avoid lusting after those that may be related to us."

[TrogL]

3. I just visited family - they drive me completely batshit

...and they complain that I haven't visited in 10 years. Frankly, I think it's prevented a homicide.

Now the interesting thing is that I'm adopted. How does that factor in?

[Runcible Spoon]

5. "Now the interesting thing is that I'm adopted. How does that factor in"

that is why the article is pure crap from a "biologically predictive" perspective...even though that is what they are trying to argue. No consideration whatsoever for the social pressures.

[CTyankee]

8. I was waiting for someone to say this. Thank you.

I have mixed feelings. I love seeing my grandkids but they are getting old enough to be downright obnoxious and they fight constantly. It's worse in the winter because they get holed up with bad weather and tempers are frayed. Plus the whining, oh the whining...

I get home and I collapse for about 12 hours...

[Runcible Spoon]

4. seems like a benign enough article until this part:

""I am hopeful that other researchers in the cognitive neurosciences will follow Dr. Platek's lead and take full advantage of the predictive power of a Darwinian perspective on the design of the structure of the mind,"

THIS is the kind of crap that gets government funding. Sad.

[IDemo]

6. Well, I'm no neuroscientist, but

couldn't "the predictive power of a Darwinian perspective" merely mean that the entire structure of the evolved brain is considered; the 'reptilian complex' as well as the fore-brain?

[Runcible Spoon]

7. no, predictive means predictive

it's a very dangerous, slippey slope when something already nebulous like cognitive science goes from observation to prediction, Darwin never intended for his theories to be used in such a way anyway.

[DS1]

9. and the blocked toilet warps your nose