Prototypical spatial patterns arise from face-to-face social interaction via hyperscanning

When two brains are engaged in a social interaction, specific brain activity emerges that causes the two brains to become ‘in sync’. This discovery was made possible by ‘hyperscanning’, a technique where two people are simultaneously scanned in two Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners to record their brain activity while interacting with each other in real-time. Our lab is spearheading a new method of looking at common brain architectures for representing visual information by looking at fine-scale patterns of brain activity. This project expands our methods to investigate whether a similar common architecture exists for social information. The prototypical spatial patterns of activity that arise from social interactions demonstrate that it may be possible to decode this information in one individual by using the patterns of another. Decoding social information stored in the brain will be important for understanding social deficiencies such as autism spectrum disorder and will provide insight into a hallmark ability of the human species.

Faculty Supervisor:

Reza Farivar-Mohseni

Student:

Partner:

National Institute for Physiological Sciences

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Life Sciences (not health); Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Other

University:

Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre

Program: