Anatomical Connectivity Influences both Intra- and Inter-Brain Synchronizations

Abstract

Recent development in diffusion spectrum brain imaging combined to functional simulation has the potential to further our understanding of how structure and dynamics are intertwined in the human brain. At the intra-individual scale, neurocomputational models have already started to uncover how the human connectome constrains the coordination of brain activity across distributed brain regions. In parallel, at the inter-individual scale, nascent social neuroscience provides a new dynamical vista of the coupling between two embodied cognitive agents. Using EEG hyperscanning to record simultaneously the brain activities of subjects during their ongoing interaction, we have previously demonstrated that behavioral synchrony correlates with the emergence of inter-brain synchronization. However, the functional meaning of such synchronization remains to be specified. Here, we use a biophysical model to quantify to what extent inter-brain synchronizations are related to the anatomical and functional similarity of the two brains in interaction. Pairs of interacting brains were numerically simulated and compared to real data. Results show a potential dynamical property of the human connectome to facilitate inter-individual synchronizations and thus may partly account for our propensity to generate dynamical couplings with others.

The human dynamic clamp as a paradigm for social interaction

“…To achieve a desirable degree of realism, the architecture of a neurally grounded HDC may take inspiration from human connectomics (72)(73)(74)(75). Using such an approach, Dumas et al (76) already designed a dyadic model of two interacting brains, in good agreement with empirical evidence at both neural and social levels (77). Fully embedding a connectome with Hebbian or Hebbian-like rules in the HDC might allow testing hypotheses regarding the emergence of a mirror neuron system (78), and advance our understanding of learning, language, and their social foundations (79).…”

A roadmap to computational social neuroscience

“…Early work connected two of them, the behavioral and the social [5], while leaving the neural scale implicit (though the neural level is profoundly entwined in the mathematical description of social coordination behavior, it did not receive its own distinct equations). The neural level was explicitly integrated in [28] in a model that related the dynamics of social behavior with neural dynamics in a realistic architecture of brain areas (including interbrain structural symmetries). Realism was achieved by fingerprinting actual human brains: neural areas were obtained by anatomical brain atlas and connections from diffusion tensor imaging.…”

“…The coupling was neural within brain and informational between brains. Results assessed how the anatomical connectivity of the human brain enhances similarities of the neural dynamics and facilitates the creation of sensorimotor coupling between individuals [28]. Each of the three aforementioned levels might organize themselves at multiple spatiotemporal scales, for instance, spatially, the nervous system is known to organize at micro-meso-and macro-scales.…”

The Sixth Sense-Emotional Contagion; Review of Biophysical Mechanisms Influencing Information Transfer in Groups

“…The principle of synchronization appears fundamental to crowd formation, as well as with other people, this phenomena regulates signals across the brain within our own mind [80].…”