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Optimists Share Neural Patterns for Future Thinking
JAPAN, JUL 21 – Researchers found 87 optimistic adults share similar medial prefrontal cortex activity patterns when imagining future events, which may explain their stronger social connections and mental health benefits.
- A Kobe University team led by psychologist Kuniaki Yanagisawa published on 21 July 2025 that optimists share similar brain activity when imagining future events in Japan.
- The study arose from gaps between social psychology and neuroscience, with researchers using fMRI to measure 87 participants' brain patterns while imagining positive, neutral, or negative futures.
- Researchers found that optimistic individuals exhibited remarkably similar activation in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area tied to self-reflection and future thinking, unlike pessimists whose patterns varied widely.
- Yanagisawa emphasized that the study uniquely demonstrated how the concept of "thinking alike" can be observed directly through specific brain activity patterns, and noted that optimistic individuals show clearer distinctions in neural processing when considering positive versus negative future events.
- These findings imply that optimism may reflect a shared neural signature helping explain better social connection and communication among optimists while raising questions about how this similarity develops.
23 Articles
23 Articles
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How Optimists Are Alike
Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel Anna Karenina has among the most famous first lines of any book: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Psychologists tend to agree. The evidence keeps piling up. Studies repeatedly find that people with desirable traits like good health, higher income, and subjective happiness are more similar to one another in personality, values, and other measures than people without these trai…
Optimists think alike—and brain scans just proved it
When imagining the future, optimists' brains tend to look remarkably alike, while pessimists show more varied neural activity. This neurological alignment could explain why optimists are often more socially in sync with others.
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