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the pathway is shown for simplicity. (Adapted from the American Society
for Neuroscience).
Humans – the ultimate party animals
Even 80 year olds look forward to their weekly bingo or bridge game

or to just simply meet up with family/friends and having a chat. From
cooking a favourite meal to getting together with friends, it’s the smells and
the stories and the smiles that make human connections so essential to

psychological wellbeing. This is why we humans are the most social of the
apes – no question about it – we love to party. No surprise then about the
popularity of the Internet as it has taken our ability to socialise to a new
level. Every comment, post, status update and tweet is a tiny jolt that

triggers the pleasure centres of our brains. On top of that – time and
location are no longer impediments to social contact with like-minded
friends.

Seeing is believing
The second feature is that over 70% of the human brain is dedicated to
vision which means that our brains think in terms of visual images.

In fact, the visual system is the first to mature in the human brain so
that by the age of five, children are able to compete on visual games with
their grandparents …and win! This explains why the newer social networks

like Instagram and Pinterest that use images have the potential to become
even more popular for Internet users that the text-based Facebook and
Twitter.
The future of the Internet is a neurofuture

Future Internet innovations is not in a mobile or social experience
that’s just smaller but something more intimate, and more expressive – one
which embraces a sensor-rich Smartphone including touchable screen and

high-density display. The future will be wrapped in an envelope of
sensation – vision, touch, taste, smell and sound – where companies will
compete with each other to rush out new innovations that flood our pleasure
centres with dopamine. Narrowing the gap between our physical and digital

worlds – making our digital worlds as visual, tactile and emotional as the
real world – such as the world’s first cyber-hug – is just around the corner.
Today’s new Android and iPhone mobile app “sense and soul” that takes

the orderly, linear and rational layout of Google+ and transforms it into
something beautifully nonlinear, unstructured and stimulating might be an
important step in this direction.