Abstract
We walk together, we watch together, we win together: Interpersonally coordinated actions are omnipresent in everyday life, yet the associated neural mechanisms are not well understood. Available evidence suggests that the synchronization of oscillatory activity across brains may provide a mechanism for the temporal alignment of actions between two or more individuals. In an attempt to provide a direct test of this hypothesis, we applied transcranial alternating current stimulation simultaneously to two individuals (hyper-tACS) who were asked to drum in synchrony at a set pace. Thirty-eight female-female dyads performed the dyadic drumming in the course of 3 weeks under three different hyper-tACS stimulation conditions: same-phase-same-frequency; different-phase-different-frequency; sham. Based on available evidence and theoretical considerations, stimulation was applied over right frontal and parietal sites in the theta frequency range. We predicted that same-phase-same-frequency stimulation would improve interpersonal action coordination, expressed as the degree of synchrony in dyadic drumming, relative to the other two conditions. Contrary to expectations, both the same-phase-same-frequency and the different-phase-different-frequency conditions were associated with greater dyadic drumming asynchrony relative to the sham condition. No influence of hyper-tACS on behavioral performance was seen when participants were asked to drum separately in synchrony to a metronome. Individual and dyad preferred drumming tempo was also unaffected by hyper-tACS. We discuss limitations of the present version of the hyper-tACS paradigm, and suggest avenues for future research.
Highlights
Inter-Brain Synchronization during Joint ActionJoint actions abound in everyday life
The aim of the present study was to investigate how manipulation of ongoing inter-brain phase synchronization by hyper-Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) would affect the synchrony of dyadic drumming performance
The main result of the present study is that, compared to sham stimulation, only dyadic asynchrony was modulated by same-phase-same-frequency and different-phase-differentfrequency hyper-tACS
Summary
Inter-Brain Synchronization during Joint ActionJoint actions abound in everyday life. Shared task representations have been suggested as the foundation of coordinated joint action (Knoblich et al, 2011). Experimental Manipulation of Inter-Brain Synchrony joint action, humans appear to represent their own motor actions, and the actions currently being performed and to be performed by their co-actors (Vesper et al, 2010). If interacting dyads predict and monitor the sensory outcomes of both partners’ actions and make adjustments based on both action outcomes, one would expect interpersonal coupling dynamics to emerge during joint actions. Schmidt and Richardson (2008) suggested that the organizing principles predicted by the coordination dynamics approach “can operate in neurally based behavioral oscillatory systems that are coupled by perceptual information and, that these principles represent a universal self-organizing strategy that occurs at multiple scales of nature.”
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