An evaluation of inter-brain EEG coupling methods in hyperscanning studies

EEG-based hyperscanning technology has been increasingly applied to analyze interpersonal interactions in social neuroscience in recent years. However, different methods are employed in various of studies without a complete investigation of the suitability of these methods. Our study aimed to systematically compare typical inter-brain EEG coupling methods, with simulated EEG data generated by real EEG data. In particular, two critical metrics of noise level and time delay were manipulated, and three different coupling models were tested. The results revealed that: (1) under certain conditions, various methods were leveraged by noise level and time delay, leading to different performances; (2) most algorithms achieved better experimental results and performance under high coupling degree; (3) with our simulation process, temporal and spectral models showed relatively good results, while data simulated with phase coupling model performed worse. This is the first systematic comparison of typical inter-brain EEG coupling methods, with simulated EEG data generated by real EEG data from different subjects. Existing methods mainly focused on intra-brain coupling. To our knowledge, there was only one previous study that compared five inter-brain EEG coupling methods (Burgess in Front Human Neurosci 7:881, 2013). However, the simulated data used in this study were generated time series with varied degrees of phase coupling without considering any EEG characteristics. For future research, appropriate methods need to be selected based on possible underlying mechanisms (temporal, spectral and phase coupling model hypothesis) of a specific study, as well as the expected coupling degree and conditions.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-022-09911-1.