Collective Neuroscience is a Thing

Turns out that being on the same wavelength with someone is far more than just a figure of speech

Hiya!

Technological advancements over the last few decades have illuminated information scientists could once only dream about. We have machines now that reveal complex neural networks and allow researchers to map the brain regions that make sense of sight, sound, and language and link meaning with experiences. And we’ve learned far more than that. Yet, for a long time, we’ve been limited to studying one person or brain at a time doing independent tasks.

But we humans are social animals, and despite our advancements in neuroscience, our knowledge regarding social neuroscience (the neurobiology of human interaction) is sorely lacking, at least until recently. Thankfully, a growing number of neuroscientists are exploring ways to observe the simultaneous brain activity of multiple individuals during social interactions.

Remarkably, they’re all finding similar things. Mainly that the phrase “being on the same wave length” as someone is more than just a saying. It’s an actual neurological state that occurs when our brain waves sync with someone else’s.

Hyperscanning

It’s only been two decades since neuroscientist Read Montague, now at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, published the first-ever study to successfully monitor two brains simultaneously. He instructed the two participants to lie in separate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, then monitored their brain activity while they engaged in a simple game requiring two players. Montague referred to the process as “hyperscanning.”

These days, as interest in the topic has grown, a brand new field of research known as “collective neuroscience” has emerged around hyperscanning. Generally speaking, collective neuroscientists study the brain activity of two or more people using various technological methods as the participants engage in social activities, such as storytelling or lightly competitive games.

Montague’s hyperscanning experiment was mainly just to demonstrate that it’s possible to measure simultaneous brain activity between two or more brains and to identify technical kinks to work out for future experiments—which is precisely what happened over the last twenty-plus years. These days, neuroscientists have access to more than just fMRI machines to measure brain activity.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is similar to fMRI in that they both track changes in blood oxygen levels and are noninvasive. Still, while fMRI machines are expensive, large, clunky, loud, and a claustrophobic’s nightmare, fNIRS machines are inexpensive and portable, involving a simple cap with sensors worn on the head and a small device light enough to hold in your hands. The only downside to fNIRS is that measurements are limited to only the upper areas of the brain because it isn’t strong enough to research the lower regions.

Meanwhile, electroencephalography (EEG) is another popular type of scan because it identifies the general speed and types of brain waves occurring. Similar to fNIRS machines, EEG involves the participant wearing a head cap with sensors, but EEG measures the sequence and speed of brain activity rather than where it’s happening.

Remarkably, neuroscientists are discovering similar results practically across the board. That synchronicity in brain activity between multiple people is more common than we might think during social activities.