Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Sep 5;13(8):841-849.
doi: 10.1093/scan/nsy060.

Putting our heads together: interpersonal neural synchronization as a biological mechanism for shared intentionality

Frank A Fishburn  1 , Vishnu P Murty  2 , Christina O Hlutkowsky  1 , Caroline E MacGillivray  1 , Lisa M Bemis  1 , Meghan E Murphy  1 , Theodore J Huppert  3 , Susan B Perlman  1
Affiliations

Putting our heads together: interpersonal neural synchronization as a biological mechanism for shared intentionality

Frank A Fishburn et al. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. .

Abstract

Shared intentionality, or collaborative interactions in which individuals have a shared goal and must coordinate their efforts, is a core component of human interaction. However, the biological bases of shared intentionality and, specifically, the processes by which the brain adjusts to the sharing of common goals, remain largely unknown. Using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), coordination of cerebral hemodynamic activation was found in subject pairs when completing a puzzle together in contrast to a condition in which subjects completed identical but individual puzzles (same intention without shared intentionality). Interpersonal neural coordination was also greater when completing a puzzle together compared to two control conditions including the observation of another pair completing the same puzzle task or watching a movie with a partner (shared experience). Further, permutation testing revealed that the time course of neural activation of one subject predicted that of their partner, but not that of others completing the identical puzzle in different partner sets. Results indicate unique brain-to-brain coupling specific to shared intentionality beyond what has been previously found by investigating the fundamentals of social exchange.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Visual representation of the Tangram puzzle task. Subjects were asked to complete a single puzzle working as a dyad in the ‘together active’ condition but were asked to complete the same puzzle while working individually in the ‘apart’ condition. In order to control for equal sensory input across subjects and conditions, subjects observed an unknown pair completing a puzzle as a dyad on a video screen in the ‘movie’ condition or observed their remaining two companions complete the puzzle in the ‘together passive’ condition.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Probe rendering on 3D brain. Renderings of the fNIRS probe superimposed on the right hemisphere (left) and dorsal (right) views of the Colin27 brain template. The red points represent sources, the blue points are detectors and the green lines are measurement channels.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Sample fNIRS signals. Normalized signals recorded from two subjects are shown, taken from the ‘together active’ (top) and ‘apart’ (bottom) conditions. Differences between each pair of signals are shaded. Synchronization is observed only in the ‘together active’ condition.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Mean inter-subject synchronization for each condition. The inter-subject synchronization in the ‘together active’, ‘together passive’, ‘apart’ and ‘movie’ conditions relative to the null distribution derived from permutation testing. Relative Fisher’s Z-values are shown for all possible connections. Warm colors indicate connections stronger than the null mean, while cool colors indicate those weaker.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Comparisons of inter-subject synchronization between conditions. The ‘together active’ condition had significantly greater inter-subject synchronization than the ‘together passive’, ‘movie’ and ‘apart’ conditions at an FDR-corrected threshold of q < 0.05. The ‘together active’ condition had no connections that were significantly less than any other condition.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Results from the permutation test visualized for a single channel-pair. Grey bars represent the histogram of the standardized null distribution generated from non-concurrent participant pairs. The grey line represents the fit of a normal distribution to the null data. The shaded regions represent the tails of the distribution significant at an FDR-corrected threshold of q < 0.05. The observed inter-subject synchronization for the ‘together active’ condition was significantly greater than the null distribution, while that of the ‘together passive’, ‘apart’ and ‘movie’ conditions was not.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edn) edn, American Psychiatric Association., Retrieved from http://psychiatryonline.org/doi/book/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596. - DOI
    1. Anders S., Heinzle J., Weiskopf N., Ethofer T., Haynes J.-D. (2011). Flow of affective information between communicating brains. NeuroImage, 54(1), 439–46. 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.07.004. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bakeman R., Adamson L.B. (1984). Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother-infant and peer-infant interaction. Child Development, 55(4), 1278–89 10.2307/1129997. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Becchio C., Sartori L., Castiello U. (2010). Toward you: the social side of actions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 183–8 10.1177/0963721410370131. - DOI
    1. Benjamini Y., Hochberg Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological), 57(1), 289–300.

Publication types