Brain-to-Brain Synchrony Tracks Real-World Dynamic Group Interactions in the Classroom
Brain-to-Brain Synchrony Tracks Real-World Dynamic Group Interactions in the Classroom
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2017.04.002
复制
发表时间：
2017-05-08
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
Poeppel, David
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dikker, Suzanne;Wan, Lu;Poeppel, David
人类的大脑已经进化为群体生活[1]。然而，我们对它如何支持动态的群体互动知之甚少，以至于对现实世界社交交流的研究被称为“社会神经科学的暗物质”[2]。最近，各种研究已经开始通过比较多个人在各种(半自然主义)任务中的大脑反应来探讨这个问题[3-15]。这些实验揭示了刺激属性[13]、个体差异[14]和背景因素[15]如何支持人与人之间神经活动的相似性和差异性。然而，到目前为止，大多数研究都受到各种限制：它们往往缺乏参与者之间的直接面对面互动，通常局限于二人组，不调查随时间变化的社会动态，而且至关重要的是，它们很少研究自然环境下的社会行为。在这里，我们极大地扩展了这种实验，超越了二联体和实验室的墙壁，以确定在动态的真实世界群体互动期间群体参与的神经标记。我们使用便携式脑电(EEG)同步记录了12名高中生一个学期(11个班级)在常规课堂活动中的大脑活动(图1A-1C；补充实验程序，S1节)。一种评估基于群体的神经连贯性的新分析技术表明，学生之间大脑活动同步的程度既可以预测学生的课堂参与度，也可以预测社会动态。这表明，大脑对大脑的同步可能是动态社会互动的一个神经标志，可能是由共同的注意力机制驱动的。这项研究验证了一种很有希望的新方法，用于研究生态自然环境中群体相互作用的神经科学。
The human brain has evolved for group living [1]. Yet we know so little about how it supports dynamic group interactions that the study of real-world social exchanges has been dubbed the "dark matter of social neuroscience'' [2]. Recently, various studies have begun to approach this question by comparing brain responses of multiple individuals during a variety of (semi-naturalistic) tasks [3-15]. These experiments reveal how stimulus properties [13], individual differences [14], and contextual factors [15] may underpin similarities and differences in neural activity across people. However, most studies to date suffer from various limitations: they often lack direct face-to-face interaction between participants, are typically limited to dyads, do not investigate social dynamics across time, and, crucially, they rarely study social behavior under naturalistic circumstances. Here we extend such experimentation drastically, beyond dyads and beyond laboratory walls, to identify neural markers of group engagement during dynamic real-world group interactions. We used portable electroencephalogram (EEG) to simultaneously record brain activity from a class of 12 high school students over the course of a semester (11 classes) during regular classroom activities (Figures 1A-1C; Supplemental Experimental Procedures, section S1). A novel analysis technique to assess group-based neural coherence demonstrates that the extent to which brain activity is synchronized across students predicts both student class engagement and social dynamics. This suggests that brain-to-brain synchrony is a possible neural marker for dynamic social interactions, likely driven by shared attention mechanisms. This study validates a promising new method to investigate the neuroscience of group interactions in ecologically natural settings.