Abstract
Single-brain neuroimaging studies have shown that human cooperation is associated with neural activity in frontal and temporoparietal regions. However, it remains unclear whether single-brain studies are informative about cooperation in real life, where people interact dynamically. Such dynamic interactions have become the focus of inter-brain studies. An advantageous technique in this regard is functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) because it is less susceptible to movement artifacts than more conventional techniques like EEG or fMRI. We conducted a systematic review and the first quantitative meta-analysis of fNIRS hyperscanning of cooperation, based on thirteen studies with 890 human participants. Overall, the meta-analysis revealed evidence of statistically significant inter-brain synchrony while people were cooperating, with large overall effect sizes in both frontal and temporoparietal areas. All thirteen studies observed significant inter-brain synchrony in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), suggesting that this region is particularly relevant for cooperative behavior. The consistency in these findings is unlikely to be due to task-related activations, given that the relevant studies used diverse cooperation tasks. Together, the present findings support the importance of inter-brain synchronization of frontal and temporoparietal regions in interpersonal cooperation. Moreover, the present article highlights the usefulness of meta-analyses as a tool for discerning patterns in inter-brain dynamics.
Significance Statement
We present systematic review and the first quantitative meta-analysis of fNIRS hyperscanning of cooperation, based on thirteen studies with 890 participants. All thirteen studies observed significant inter-brain synchrony in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), suggesting that this region is particularly relevant for cooperative behavior. The present findings support the importance of inter-brain synchronization of frontal and temporoparietal regions in interpersonal cooperation.
Footnotes
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
AC and PK: The NBank cooperation project "Smart Fidelity Interaktionssystem zur Steigerung der Realitätsnähe bei der Durchführung handwerklicher Tätigkeitenin Virtual Reality(SmartFi), DFG-funded Research Training Group Situated Cognition (GRK 2185/1), and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Open Access Publishing Fund of Osnabrück University. SD: National Science Foundation Award #1661016, SD and SLK: the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research Award The Rhythm of Relating #406.18.GO.024.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
Jump to comment: