Crowdsourcing neuroscience: Inter-brain coupling during face-to-face interactions outside the laboratory

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Citizen Science

Background:

• Previous studies on brain synchrony during social interaction often use controlled lab settings with limited participant diversity.
• A more naturalistic approach is needed to understand brain synchronization in real-world social behaviors.
• Crowdsourcing offers a method to collect large, diverse datasets outside traditional laboratory environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if brains synchronize during naturalistic social interactions.
• To explore factors predicting inter-brain synchrony in real-world settings.
• To demonstrate the feasibility of crowdsourcing neuroscience data through public engagement.

Main Methods:

• Collected electroencephalogram (EEG) data from thousands of museum and festival visitors over five years.
• Participants engaged in 10-minute face-to-face interactions within a neurofeedback installation (Mutual Wave Machine).
• Analyzed inter-brain coupling using Imaginary Coherence and Projected Power Correlations, metrics robust to noise.

Main Results:

• Trait empathy, social closeness, engagement, and joint social behaviors (joint action, eye contact) predicted brain synchrony.
• Synchrony was most prominent in low alpha (~7-10 Hz) and beta (~20-22 Hz) oscillations.
• Findings support the link between shared engagement, joint action, and coupled neural activity in social interactions.

Conclusions:

• This study demonstrates that coupled neural activity is associated with shared engagement and joint action during naturalistic social interactions.
• A crowdsourcing approach using public venues like museums can yield large, rich datasets for studying real-life social behavior.
• This citizen science model facilitates public participation in scientific research outside the laboratory.