Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, United States.
Graduate Institute of Mind, Brain and Consciousness, Taipei Medical University, New Taipei City 235, Taiwan.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2024 Sep 24;19(1). doi: 10.1093/scan/nsae059.
Storytelling-an ancient way for humans to share individual experiences with others-has been found to induce neural alignment among listeners. In exploring the dynamic fluctuations in listener-listener (LL) coupling throughout stories, we uncover a significant correlation between LL coupling and lagged speaker-listener (lag-SL) coupling over time. Using the analogy of neural pattern (dis)similarity as distances between participants, we term this phenomenon the "herding effect." Like a shepherd guiding a group of sheep, the more closely listeners mirror the speaker's preceding brain activity patterns (higher lag-SL similarity), the more tightly they cluster (higher LL similarity). This herding effect is particularly pronounced in brain regions where neural alignment among listeners tracks with moment-by-moment behavioral ratings of narrative content engagement. By integrating LL and SL neural coupling, this study reveals a dynamic, multibrain functional network between the speaker and the audience, with the unfolding narrative content playing a mediating role in network configuration.
讲故事——人类与他人分享个人经历的一种古老方式——已被发现能引起听众之间的神经同步。在探索故事中听众间（LL）耦合的动态波动时，我们发现 LL 耦合与随时间滞后的说话者-听众（lag-SL）耦合之间存在显著相关性。我们将这种现象比作参与者之间的神经模式（相似性）差异，称之为“羊群效应”。就像牧羊人引导一群羊一样，听众越能反映说话者之前的大脑活动模式（更高的 lag-SL 相似性），他们的聚类就越紧密（更高的 LL 相似性）。这种羊群效应在听众之间的神经同步与叙事内容参与的即时行为评分相吻合的大脑区域尤为明显。通过整合 LL 和 SL 神经耦合，本研究揭示了说话者和听众之间的动态、多脑功能网络，展开的叙事内容在网络配置中起着中介作用。
