Neural Similarity and Friendship: How Your Brain Predicts Who Becomes a True Friend

Discover groundbreaking research from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Dartmouth College showing how strangers whose brains respond similarly are more likely to become friends. Learn what this means for your own relationships, and how to cultivate more profound connection and trust with embodied awareness.

How Our Brains Process the World

Have you ever wondered why you instantly felt a bond with someone, why conversation flowed, laughter came easily, and you felt seen, while with others it felt forced or guarded? What allows two strangers to click right away? Recent neuroscience suggests the answer may lie in how our brains process the world together (Lynch & Laursen, 2009).

Groundbreaking research from UCLA and Dartmouth found that neural similarity, the degree to which two people’s brains respond to the same stimuli, can predict whether they will become friends and even grow closer over time (Shen et al., 2025).

At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, our work spans trauma, nervous system repair, sexuality, intimacy, and relationships. This research offers hope for those of us who struggle to form meaningful connections in large groups or feel stuck in social cycles of distrust or frustration. This article will explore why some people connect at lightning speed, others don’t, and how you can cultivate that brain-to-brain resonance for deeper friendship and cooperation.

Why Connection Sometimes Fails: The Struggle with Compatible Friends

     — Have you ever felt the pain of being in a group full of acquaintances but still feeling lonely?
    — Do you worry that you don’t “fit in,” no matter how many friends you try to make?
     — Do you want friendships that foster trust, cooperation, and emotional safety, but find yourself in relationships where you feel unseen, misunderstood, or disconnected?

These are more common than you might think. Many people move through life sensing they’re almost aligned with others but not quite. Conversations feel effortful, laughter feels forced, and the sense of trust never takes root. According to the first wave of this research, part of the barrier may lie not in your social skills or personality, but in your brain’s pattern of interpreting the world (Kandel & Squire, 2000).

What the Research Says: Neural Similarity as Friendship Predictor

In an extensive longitudinal study, researchers scanned the brains of strangers before they even met while they watched the same set of video clips (Quadflieg & Koldewyn, 2017). Then, eight months later, they mapped who had become friends and who had grown closer. What they found was striking: pairs of individuals whose neural responses were more similar at the outset were significantly more likely to become friends and deepen over time (Shen et al., 2025).

This phenomenon is referred to as neural homophily, the idea that similarity not just in demographics or hobbies, but in how we see and respond to the world, underlies strong social connection. In the study, even after controlling for variables such as age, gender, and background, neural similarity predicted both friendship formation and closeness (Shen et al., 2025).

In plain language: when two people unconsciously interpret, attend to, and emotionally respond to events in similar ways, the ease of connection grows exponentially. The next time you meet someone and it just clicks, your brains may have been resonating together from the first encounter.

Why Some People Don’t “Click”  And What That Means for You

If you’ve ever felt like you’re trying hard to fit in or create connection, but it still feels forced, this research may provide insight: maybe your brain’s processing style isn’t aligning smoothly with those around you. This doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong; it means your map of the world is different. And that’s okay. The challenge is navigating that difference.

When differences in attention, emotional responses, meaning-making, and neural interpretation exist, building social safety, trust, and cooperation can feel harder. You might find yourself withdrawing, feeling misunderstood, or settling for superficial connections. At the nervous-system level, this misalignment can trigger activation, fight-or-flight, or freeze responses, rather than rhythm, ease, and shared flow.

How to Cultivate Brain-to-Brain Resonance: A Practical Guide

Here’s how you can bring this research into your relational life and begin fostering deeper connection, even if friendships haven’t felt natural to you in the past.

1. Prioritise shared experience

Engage in an activity with others where attention is naturally aligned. Watch a documentary, attend a live performance, or take a class together. Shared stimuli create a context for shared neural response. Studies found that similarity in how participants processed audiovisual clips predicted friendship (Parkinson, Kleinbaum, & Wheatley, 2018).

2. Practice reflective listening and attunement

When in conversation, shift from What should I say next? to How am I experiencing this moment? And how might this other person be experiencing it? Attuned listening helps synchronise emotional and attentional rhythms.

3. Bring awareness to your body’s response

Notice when you’re with someone and your body relaxes, your breathing smooths, your focus sharpens. These are internal signals that your neural systems are aligning. At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we believe body-based awareness rewires neural patterns for connection.

4. Engage in nervous-system regulation together

Try a simple co-regulation practice: synchronise breathing with a partner for a minute or two, or engage in light movement together (such as walking in silence side by side). A shared physiological rhythm can lead to a shared neural rhythm.

5. Interrogate—and shift—your internal story

Ask yourself: Do I believe others can genuinely connect with me? Do I fear being misunderstood or invisible? Trauma and relational wounds often leave us locked in patterns of activation that block resonant connection. At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we integrate trauma-informed somatic methods to release these blocks.

Why This Matters for Groups, Trust, and Cooperation

The implications extend beyond single friendships. In workplaces, teams, and communities, when individuals share neural and relational attunement, trust and cooperation are amplified. This research offers a roadmap for true alignment in groups. Instead of bridging differences by force, the invitation is to foster shared meaning, attention, and emotional response.

When you feel connected, your nervous system registers safety, your brain anticipates cooperation, and your physiology fosters trust. This creates ripple effects into social bonding, intimacy, sexuality, and deep relational repair,  all areas of focus at Embodied Wellness and Recovery.

What You Can Begin Doing Today

     — In your next social interaction, pause: Is my brain quiet? Is my body relaxed? Am I present?
    — Choose one social activity this week where you can share meaningful attention with someone, free from the expectation to be friends or perform.
    — Notice patterns of nervous-system activation during social situations. If you feel tension, tightness, or alertness, body-aware methods such as grounding, breathwork, or simple movement can help you regulate and re-open to connection.
      — If past trauma or relational disconnection makes it hard to trust your body’s signals, consider working with a professional to rebuild somatic safety, attentional presence, and relational capacity.

At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we offer somatic relational therapy, nervous-system reparative techniques, and intimacy-informed coaching to help you not just understand connection, but live it. You don’t just want friends who see you; you deserve fractal resonant bonds at the brain-body level.

An Inside-Out Process

The mystery of why some people click instantly and others drift apart isn’t just social; it’s neural. When your brain waves match someone else’s, you’re far more likely to become friends, feel trust, and build something enduring. Rather than chasing connection through skills or roles, the invitation is to bring your body, your nervous system, your brain into resonance.

The good news: this is an inside-out process. It starts with your awareness, your regulation, and your openness to being seen at the level of brain, body, and meaning. The next time you meet someone and feel that spark of recognition, pay attention. It may be your neural system saying yes.

At Embodied Wellness and Recovery, we help you tune into that yes, repair the blocks, and step into relational life with nervous-system ease, emotional clarity, and embodied belonging.

Reach out to schedule a free 20-minute consultation with our team of therapists, relationship experts, somatic practitioners, and trauma specialists,  and begin finding connection today.

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References

Kandel, E. R., & Squire, L. R. (2000). Neuroscience: Breaking down scientific barriers to the study of brain and mind. Science, 290(5494), 1113-1120.

Lynch, Z., & Laursen, B. (2009). The neuro revolution: How brain science is changing our world. St. Martin's Press.

Parkinson, C., Kleinbaum, A. M., & Wheatley, T. (2018). Similar neural responses predict friendship. Nature communications, 9(1), 332.

Quadflieg, S., & Koldewyn, K. (2017). The neuroscience of people watching: how the human brain makes sense of other people's encounters. Annals of the new York Academy of Sciences, 1396(1), 166-182.

Shen, Y. L., Hyon, R., Wheatley, T., Kleinbaum, A. M., Welker, C., & Parkinson, C. (2025). Neural similarity predicts whether strangers become friends. Nature Human Behaviour.