What’s your default when you’re waiting in line? When you’re in a queue, lining up for your morning coffee fix — what’s the first thing you do? Strike up a friendly conversation with someone next to you? Gaze off into the middle distance? Or dive into your mobile phone world? What you choose to do has a very different neurophysiological effect on you, according to Fiona Kerr from the Neurotech Institute. "If you talk to someone else in the line … we start this lovely chemical cocktail when we interact," she said. "Even if you don’t know them, we start various parts of the brain, which are to do with our socio-emotional parts of the areas that start putting out [feel-good hormones] oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin. Dr Kerr is talking about two types of neurons — spindle and mirror neurons — that deal with in-brain connection and recognising behaviour in […]