Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, 100080, China.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2017 Oct 1;12(10):1614-1623. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsx093.
Throughout history and into the modern era, human groups have been continually subjected to a wide range of societal threats, from natural disasters to pandemics to terrorism. Yet despite this fundamental aspect of human existence, there has been little research on how societal threat affects social coordination at both the neural and the behavioral level. Here, we show for the first time that individuals are better able to coordinate under high societal threat as compared to low or no threat (Experiment 1). Using a method of hyperscanning electroencephalography (EEG), which simultaneously measures brain activity among interacting subjects, we further illustrate that interbrain synchrony of gamma band oscillations is enhanced when people are under high threat, and increased gamma interbrain synchrony is associated with lower dyadic interpersonal time lag (i.e. higher coordination) (Experiment 2). To our knowledge, the current work provides some of the first empirical evidence that gamma interbrain synchrony is associated with social coordination when humans are under threat.
纵观历史和现代，人类群体不断受到各种社会威胁的影响，从自然灾害到流行病再到恐怖主义。然而，尽管这是人类存在的一个基本方面，但对于社会威胁如何影响神经和行为层面的社会协调，几乎没有研究。在这里，我们首次表明，与低威胁或无威胁相比，个体在高社会威胁下更能进行协调（实验 1）。我们使用超扫描脑电图（EEG）的方法，该方法同时测量相互作用的受试者的大脑活动，进一步表明，当人们处于高威胁下时，伽马波段振荡的脑间同步增强，并且增加的伽马脑间同步与更低的二元人际时间滞后（即更高的协调）相关（实验 2）。据我们所知，目前的工作提供了一些初步的经验证据，表明当人类受到威胁时，伽马脑间同步与社会协调有关。
