Pseudo‐mutual gazing enhances interbrain synchrony during remote joint attention tasking

Abstract

IntroductionMutual gaze enables people to share attention and increase engagement during social interactions through intentional and implicit messages. Although previous studies have explored gaze behaviors and neural mechanisms underlying in‐person eye contact, the growing prevalence of remote communication has raised questions about how to establish mutual gaze remotely and how the brains of interacting individuals synchronize.MethodsTo address these questions, we conducted a study using eye trackers to create a pseudo‐mutual gaze channel that mirrors the gazes of each interacting dyad on their respective remote screens. To demonstrate fluctuations in coupling across brains, we incorporated electroencephalographic hyperscanning techniques to simultaneously record the brain activity of interacting dyads engaged in a joint attention task in player‐observer, collaborative, and competitive modes.ResultsOur results indicated that mutual gaze could improve the efficiency of joint attention activities among remote partners. Moreover, by employing the phase locking value, we could estimate interbrain synchrony (IBS) and observe low‐frequency couplings in the frontal and temporal regions that varied based on the interaction mode. While dyadic gender composition significantly affected gaze patterns, it did not impact the IBS.ConclusionThese results provide insight into the neurological mechanisms underlying remote interaction through the pseudo‐mutual gaze channel and have significant implications for developing effective online communication environments.

Exploring Inter-Brain Electroencephalogram Patterns for Social Cognitive Assessment During Jigsaw Puzzle Solving

“…Relatively few studies have explored increased IBS in competitive compared to the cooperative contexts [21,22,32]. In line with the latest EEG studies demonstrating cooperation and competition using different paradigms, our results also reveal a greater IBS in the frontal brain regions and lower frequency bands during cooperation.…”

“…Although our results in Fig. 8 demonstrated greater IBS in most frequency bands, including delta, theta, alpha, and beta oscillations, several recent studies, encompassing both cooperation and competition modes, have reported no findings in alpha and beta IBS [21,22]. Nevertheless, some studies using cooperative tasks have found that alpha, beta, or even gamma IBS has been observed during joint action or cooperation [3,21,23,24,34].…”

“…In line with the latest EEG studies demonstrating cooperation and competition using different paradigms, our results also reveal a greater IBS in the frontal brain regions and lower frequency bands during cooperation. In contrast, stronger IBS involving the posterior brain areas is observed while competing [21,22]. These findings suggest that IBS in delta and theta frequency bands is highly correlated with social activities.…”

“…In 2020, Barraza and colleagues claimed the crucial role of inter-brain theta oscillations during competition and cooperation, with stronger theta IBS observed while competing and gamma IBS while cooperating [21]. In 2023, the latest IBS study proposed by Chuang and colleagues demonstrated greater IBS in the frontal brain regions and lower frequency bands during cooperation, whereas stronger IBS involving the posterior brain areas is observed while competing [22]. These studies have indicated that hyperscanning is feasible for studying interbrain neural underpinnings and have highlighted the significance of inter-brain synchronizations in high-level social-cognitive processing, especially during cooperation and competition [3,10,15,16,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

“…However, mapping out brain networks and neurocognitive theories of how humans co-create and share information during social interaction remains challenging [7,8]. Increased IBS has been reported in various frequency bands, including delta [22], theta [21,26,29,33], alpha [25,26], beta [28], and gamma [21,23,28], across different cooperation and competition tasks/paradigms. Findings related to the brain regions of IBS and oscillatory frequencies are still diverse, showing inconsistent results during social interactions.…”