Investigating Cooperative Behavior in Ecological Settings: An EEG Hyperscanning Study

Abstract

The coordinated interactions between individuals are fundamental for the success of the activities in some professional categories. We reported on brain-to-brain cooperative interactions between civil pilots during a simulated flight. We demonstrated for the first time how the combination of neuroelectrical hyperscanning and intersubject connectivity could provide indicators sensitive to the humans’ degree of synchronization under a highly demanding task performed in an ecological environment. Our results showed how intersubject connectivity was able to i) characterize the degree of cooperation between pilots in different phases of the flight, and ii) to highlight the role of specific brain macro areas in cooperative behavior. During the most cooperative flight phases pilots showed, in fact, dense patterns of interbrain connectivity, mainly linking frontal and parietal brain areas. On the contrary, the amount of interbrain connections went close to zero in the non-cooperative phase. The reliability of the interbrain connectivity patterns was verified by means of a baseline condition represented by formal couples, i.e. pilots paired offline for the connectivity analysis but not simultaneously recorded during the flight. Interbrain density was, in fact, significantly higher in real couples with respect to formal couples in the cooperative flight phases. All the achieved results demonstrated how the description of brain networks at the basis of cooperation could effectively benefit from a hyperscanning approach. Interbrain connectivity was, in fact, more informative in the investigation of cooperative behavior with respect to established EEG signal processing methodologies applied at a single subject level.

Adaptive Automation Triggered by EEG-Based Mental Workload Index: A Passive Brain-Computer Interface Application in Realistic Air Traffic Control Environment

“…More recently, Shou et al (2012) found that “the frontal theta EEG activity was a sensitive and reliable metric to assess workload […] during an ATC task at the resolution of minute (s).” The same findings have been highlighted by Borghini et al (2013) involving pilots in flight simulation tasks. In other recent studies involving ATCOs (Aricò et al, 2013, 2014, 2015b,c; Borghini et al, 2014; Di Flumeri et al, 2015; Toppi et al, 2016), it was demonstrated how it was possible to compute an EEG-based Workload Index able to significantly discriminate the workload demands of the ATM task, and to monitor them continuously by using frontal-parietal brain features. Other studies about the mental workload estimation by using neurophysiological indexes, have been proposed also in other operational contexts (Car drivers - Kohlmorgen et al, 2007; Borghini et al, 2012a; military domain - Dorneich et al, 2005).…”

Getting into sync: Data‐driven analyses reveal patterns of neural coupling that distinguish among different social exchanges

“…Hyperscanning permits social neuroscience to be conducted in ecologically valid contexts; Toppi et al (2016), for example, used dual-EEG to investigate inter-brain events among aircraft pilots during flight simulations, revealing patterns of between-brain coherence that differentiated between various cooperative scenarios. Hyperscanning permits social neuroscience to be conducted in ecologically valid contexts; Toppi et al (2016), for example, used dual-EEG to investigate inter-brain events among aircraft pilots during flight simulations, revealing patterns of between-brain coherence that differentiated between various cooperative scenarios.…”

“…Future research should also examine whether the interactionspecific patterns of neural coupling revealed here extend to more realworld social situations. Hyperscanning permits social neuroscience to be conducted in ecologically valid contexts; Toppi et al (2016), for example, used dual-EEG to investigate inter-brain events among aircraft pilots during flight simulations, revealing patterns of between-brain coherence that differentiated between various cooperative scenarios. It would be interesting to see whether the same patterns of neural coupling that we have observed with our interactive experimental task delineate among social exchanges with real-world implications.…”

“…With these techniques, studies have revealed various patterns of neural coupling elicited during social interaction; while temporally contingent brain responses are observed between interactants during verbal and non-verbal communication (Ahn et al, 2017;Bilek et al, 2015;Pérez, Carreiras, & Duñabeitia, 2017), between-brain synchrony or "alignment" (Hasson & Frith, 2016) is reported during cooperative and competitive joint-action tasks (e.g., Cheng, Li, & Hu, 2015;Sänger, Müller, & Lindenberger, 2012;Shaw et al, 2018;Toppi et al, 2016).…”

The Association among Default Mode Network Functional Connectivity, Mentalization, and Psychopathology in a Nonclinical Sample: An eLORETA Study

“…Finally, we investigated DMN by means of EEG, which has several weaknesses and limitations; it provides low resolution topography, and is only sensitive to postsynaptic potentials generated in the superficial layers of the cortex neglecting neuronal responses from structures that are deep in the brain [68]. Nevertheless, the EEG recording system has high temporal resolution and provides ecological experimental settings, whereby people are able to stay and perform psychological tasks in a more natural way [69].…”