Page 9 - Effective communication Skills by Dale King

Chapter 1: How the Human Mind Works

Picture this. There is a device that could record every memory, idea, and
dream in your brain and then send the entire contents to another person. This

sounds game-changing, right? The truth is, we already have this type of
technology; it is known as effective storytelling. The life of the human
revolves around the ability to share experiences and information.

Being able to communicate well is all a matter of getting “in sync” with other
people. You may have even noticed this. Maybe you have seen where people
start matching steps as they walk, or how they imitate the gestures of others
as they talk, or use grammar or phrases that the other person uses. But this

syncing up doesn’t just happen in people’s mannerism or speech. It also
happens in parts of the brain. This is what is known as “neural coupling,” and
scientists believe it is an extremely important part of communication.

In one study on the functions of the brain, while communicating, scientists
had a person tell a 15-minute story while also having the brain scanned with
an MRI to record all of the activity in the different regions. They took this
recorded and played it for 11 volunteers while they were having an MRI. As

they listened to the recorded, their brain activity matched up with the
storytellers.

This is a great way of looking at the brain during communication, especially
considering there are quite a few studies that look at “the brain.” This doesn’t
give us a good idea of what the brain does during communication because it
takes more than one person to have a conversation. It also does a good job of
showing that listening and talking aren’t two separate activities. The “neural

coupling” takes place in the “production” and “comprehension” parts of the
listener’s brain.

What’s even more interesting is that the firing in the brain regions happened
first in the listener. That means the listener’s brain is acting in anticipation of
what the speaker is going to say. They were priming their self, so to speak, as
what they were expecting to hear. The more accurate these “predictive
anticipatory responses” were in the listener, the better they were able to

understand the story. This means that if what the speaker says goes
completely against what the person was expecting, the listener is going to be