Hyperscanning: a valid method to study neural inter brain underpinnings of social interaction

Despite decades of research in economics and psychology attempting to identify ingredients that make up successful teams, neuroscientists have only just begun to study how multiple brains interact. Recent research has shown that people’s brain activity becomes synchronized with others’ (inter-brain synchrony) during social engagement. However, little is known as to whether inter-brain synchrony relates to collective behavior within teams. Here, we merge the nascent field of group neuroscience with the extant literature of team dynamics and collective performance. We recruited 174 participants in groups of 4 and randomly assigned them to complete a series of problem-solving tasks either independently or as a team, while simultaneously recording each person’s brain activity using an EEG hyperscanning setup. This design allowed us to examine the relationship between group identification and inter-brain synchrony in explaining collective performance. As expected, teammates identified more strongly with one another, cooperated more on an economic game, and outperformed the average individual on most problem-solving tasks. Crucially, inter-brain synchrony, but not self-reported group identification, predicted collective performance among teams. These results suggest that inter-brain synchrony can be informative in understanding collective performance among teams where self-report measures may fail to capture behavior.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inter-brain synchrony in teams predicts collective performance

Reinero

Dikker

Bavel

2020

“…Here, we mainly focus on verbal communication, as it is the dominant and most commonly studied mode of language communication compared to non-verbal or sign language communication. The methodological aspects and the non-verbal components of social interaction are not discussed in detail here, as they have been well reviewed elsewhere (for reviews, see De Jaegher and Di Paolo, 2007 ; Hari and Kujala, 2009 ; Dumas et al , 2011 ; Hasson et al , 2012 ; Wheatley et al , 2012 ; Schilbach et al , 2013 ; Babiloni and Astolfi, 2014 ; Hari et al , 2015 ; Hasson and Frith, 2016 ; Gallotti et al , 2017 ; Bolis and Schilbach, 2018 ; Minagawa et al , 2018 ; Shamay-Tsoory et al , 2019 ; Czeszumski et al , 2020 ; Köster et al , 2020 ). However, non-verbal communication will be briefly mentioned when it is relevant.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A hierarchical model for interpersonal verbal communication

Jiang

Zheng

2020

The ability to use language makes us human. For decades, researchers have been racking their minds to understand the relation between language and the human brain. Nevertheless, most previous neuroscientific research has investigated this issue from a “single-brain” perspective, thus neglecting the nature of interpersonal communication through language. With the development of modern hyperscanning techniques, researchers have begun probing the neurocognitive processes underlying interpersonal verbal communication and have examined the involvement of interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in communication. However, in most cases, the neurocognitive processes underlying INS are obscure. To tentatively address this issue, we propose herein a hierarchical model based on findings from a growing amount of hyperscanning research. We suggest that three levels of neurocognitive processes are primarily involved in interpersonal verbal communication and are closely associated with distinctive patterns of INS. Different levels of these processes modulate each other bidirectionally. Furthermore, we argued that two processes (shared representation and interpersonal predictive coding) might coexist and work together at each level to facilitate successful interpersonal verbal communication. We hope this model will inspire further innovative research in several directions within the fields of social and cognitive neuroscience.

“…Whereas SPC deals with autonomic signals, hyperscanning handles the synchronized acquisition of brain signals of two different subjects ( Montague, 2002 ). The methods, analyses and results of the last 20 years of hyperscanning research have been recently reviewed ( Czeszumski et al , 2020 ). Its first applications included the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multivariate model for cooperation: bridging social physiological compliance and hyperscanning

Sciaraffa

Liu

Aricò

et al. 2020

The neurophysiological analysis of cooperation has evolved over the past 20 years, moving towards the research of common patterns in neurophysiological signals of people interacting. Social Physiological Compliance (SPC) and Hyperscanning represent two frameworks for the joint analysis of autonomic and brain signals respectively. Each of the two approaches allows to know about a single layer of cooperation according to the nature of these signals: SPC provides information mainly related to emotions, and Hyperscanning that related to cognitive aspects. In this work, after the analysis of the state of the art of SPC and Hyperscanning, we explored the possibility to unify the two approaches creating a complete neurophysiological model for cooperation considering both affective and cognitive mechanisms. We synchronously recorded electrodermal activity, cardiac and brain signals of 14 cooperative dyads. Time series from these signals were extracted and Multivariate Granger Causality was computed. The results showed that only when subjects in a dyad cooperate there is a statistically significant causality between the multivariate variables representing each subject. Moreover, the entity of this statistical relationship correlates with the dyad’s performance. Finally, given the novelty of this approach and its exploratory nature, we provided its strengths and limitations.