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Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony

Social interactive learning denotes the ability to acquire new information from a conspecific—a prerequisite for cultural evolution and survival. As inspired by recent neurophysiological research, here we tested whether social interactive learning can be augmented by exogenously synchronizing oscill...

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Autores principales: Pan, Yafeng, Novembre, Giacomo, Song, Bei, Zhu, Yi, Hu, Yi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7812617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32591830
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa080
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author Pan, Yafeng
Novembre, Giacomo
Song, Bei
Zhu, Yi
Hu, Yi
author_facet Pan, Yafeng
Novembre, Giacomo
Song, Bei
Zhu, Yi
Hu, Yi
author_sort Pan, Yafeng
collection PubMed
description Social interactive learning denotes the ability to acquire new information from a conspecific—a prerequisite for cultural evolution and survival. As inspired by recent neurophysiological research, here we tested whether social interactive learning can be augmented by exogenously synchronizing oscillatory brain activity across an instructor and a learner engaged in a naturalistic song-learning task. We used a dual brain stimulation protocol entailing the trans-cranial delivery of synchronized electric currents in two individuals simultaneously. When we stimulated inferior frontal brain regions, with 6 Hz alternating currents being in-phase between the instructor and the learner, the dyad exhibited spontaneous and synchronized body movement. Remarkably, this stimulation also led to enhanced learning performance. These effects were both phase- and frequency-specific: 6 Hz anti-phase stimulation or 10 Hz in-phase stimulation, did not yield comparable results. Furthermore, a mediation analysis disclosed that interpersonal movement synchrony acted as a partial mediator of the effect of dual brain stimulation on learning performance, i.e. possibly facilitating the effect of dual brain stimulation on learning. Our results provide a causal demonstration that inter-brain synchronization is a sufficient condition to improve real-time information transfer between pairs of individuals.
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spelling pubmed-78126172021-01-25 Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony Pan, Yafeng Novembre, Giacomo Song, Bei Zhu, Yi Hu, Yi Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci Original Manuscript Social interactive learning denotes the ability to acquire new information from a conspecific—a prerequisite for cultural evolution and survival. As inspired by recent neurophysiological research, here we tested whether social interactive learning can be augmented by exogenously synchronizing oscillatory brain activity across an instructor and a learner engaged in a naturalistic song-learning task. We used a dual brain stimulation protocol entailing the trans-cranial delivery of synchronized electric currents in two individuals simultaneously. When we stimulated inferior frontal brain regions, with 6 Hz alternating currents being in-phase between the instructor and the learner, the dyad exhibited spontaneous and synchronized body movement. Remarkably, this stimulation also led to enhanced learning performance. These effects were both phase- and frequency-specific: 6 Hz anti-phase stimulation or 10 Hz in-phase stimulation, did not yield comparable results. Furthermore, a mediation analysis disclosed that interpersonal movement synchrony acted as a partial mediator of the effect of dual brain stimulation on learning performance, i.e. possibly facilitating the effect of dual brain stimulation on learning. Our results provide a causal demonstration that inter-brain synchronization is a sufficient condition to improve real-time information transfer between pairs of individuals. Oxford University Press 2020-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC7812617/ /pubmed/32591830 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa080 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Manuscript
Pan, Yafeng
Novembre, Giacomo
Song, Bei
Zhu, Yi
Hu, Yi
Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony
title Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony
title_full Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony
title_fullStr Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony
title_full_unstemmed Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony
title_short Dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony
title_sort dual brain stimulation enhances interpersonal learning through spontaneous movement synchrony
topic Original Manuscript
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7812617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32591830
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa080
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