Browsing by Author "Falcon, Mari"

Objective. In cognitive neuroscience empathy is defined as a set of skills and tendencies that enables us to interpret and predict the mental states and actions of others and share emotional states and the experience of others. These skills and tendencies are important for successful interaction and in most situations rely heavily on natural social cues. In addition to verbal cues, these natural cues consist of for example facial expressions, bodily gestures, and prosody of speech. Also, a shared environment that enables for example eye contact and joint attention have previously been found beneficial for empathy. However, a growing percentage of our social interaction takes place in online environments where many of these features found important during face-to-face interaction are absent. A great body of evidence exists on the decrease in empathy skills during online compared to face-to-face interaction. A fair amount of research also exists on the neural foundation underlying empathy. Research on how this decrease in empathy processes during online interaction can be observed on the neural level is however limited. One phenomenon found to occur during face-to-face interaction is the synchronization of the brain's electric activity between collaborating individuals. Associations between this neural synchrony and the quality of interaction have also been found. The purpose of this study is to investigate 1) whether inter-brain synchrony occurs during online collaboration in the absence of natural social cues and 2) whether this synchrony is associated with the empathy skills of the collaborating individuals. Methods. The subjects of the study consisted of 21 pairs, each in which the two subjects knew each other in advance and decided to participate in the study together. The subjects first completed individual empathy tests, after which their task was to play a collaborative online car game together in separate physical locations during which one of the subjects was to control the speed while the other was to control the direction of the car. During this task, the neural activity of each subject was measured with EEG. The inter-brain synchrony between the collaborating individuals was studied by investigating the associations of power in the theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands measured over the frontal, frontocentral, central, parietal, temporoparietal, and occipital regions between the two individuals. Results and Conclusions. Inter-brain synchrony specific to collaboration was found in the theta frequency band over the frontal, frontocentral, central, parietal, and temporoparietal regions; in the alpha frequency band over the frontocentral region; in the beta frequency band over the frontocentral, central, parietal, and occipital regions; and in the gamma frequency band over the frontocentral and central regions. This suggests that the synchrony in these frequency bands measured over these regions is related to computer-mediated collaboration. No significant associations were found between the inter-brain synchrony and empathy skills.