Barraza Paulo, Pérez Alejandro, Rodríguez Eugenio
Center for Advanced Research in Education, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Institute of Education, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2020 Jul 30;14:295. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00295. eCollection 2020.
Cooperation and competition are two ways of social interaction keys to life in society. Recent EEG-based hyperscanning studies reveal that cooperative and competitive interactions induce an increase in interbrain coupling. However, whether this interbrain coupling effect is just a reflection of inter-subject motor coordination or can also signal the type of social interaction is unknown. Here, we show that behavioral coordination and social interaction type can be distinguished according to the frequency of oscillation in which the brains are coupled. We use EEG to simultaneously measure the brain activity of pairs of subjects, while they were performing a visual cue-target task in a cooperative and competitive manner. Behavioral responses were quasi-simultaneous between subject pairs for both competitive and cooperative conditions, with faster average response times for the competitive condition. Concerning brain activity, we found increased interbrain coupling in theta band (3-7 Hz) during cooperation and competition, with stronger coupling during competitive interactions. This increase of interbrain theta coupling correlated with a decrease in reaction times of the dyads. Interestingly, we also found an increase in brain-to-brain coupling in gamma band (38-42 Hz) only during cooperative interactions. Unlike the theta coupling effect, the gamma interbrain coupling did not correlate with dyads' reaction times. Taken together, these results suggest that theta interbrain coupling could be linked to motor coordination processes common to cooperative and competitive interactions, while gamma brain-to-brain coupling emerges as an electrophysiological marker of shared intentionality during cooperative interactions.
合作与竞争是社会互动的两种方式，是社会生活的关键。最近基于脑电图的超扫描研究表明，合作与竞争互动会导致脑间耦合增加。然而，这种脑间耦合效应仅仅是受试者间运动协调的反映，还是也能表明社会互动的类型，目前尚不清楚。在这里，我们表明可以根据大脑耦合的振荡频率来区分行为协调和社会互动类型。我们使用脑电图同时测量成对受试者的大脑活动，他们以合作和竞争的方式执行视觉线索-目标任务。在竞争和合作条件下，受试者对之间的行为反应几乎是同时的，竞争条件下的平均反应时间更快。关于大脑活动，我们发现在合作和竞争过程中，θ波段（3-7赫兹）的脑间耦合增加，竞争互动期间的耦合更强。这种脑间θ耦合的增加与二元组反应时间的减少相关。有趣的是，我们还发现仅在合作互动期间γ波段（38-42赫兹）的脑对脑耦合增加。与θ耦合效应不同，γ脑间耦合与二元组的反应时间无关。综上所述，这些结果表明，θ脑间耦合可能与合作和竞争互动共有的运动协调过程有关，而γ脑对脑耦合则作为合作互动期间共享意向性的电生理标志物出现。
