Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Apr 10:6:83.
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00083. eCollection 2012.

MEG dual scanning: a procedure to study real-time auditory interaction between two persons

Pamela Baess  1 , Andrey Zhdanov, Anne Mandel, Lauri Parkkonen, Lotta Hirvenkari, Jyrki P Mäkelä, Veikko Jousmäki, Riitta Hari
Affiliations

MEG dual scanning: a procedure to study real-time auditory interaction between two persons

Pamela Baess et al. Front Hum Neurosci. .

Abstract

Social interactions fill our everyday life and put strong demands on our brain function. However, the possibilities for studying the brain basis of social interaction are still technically limited, and even modern brain imaging studies of social cognition typically monitor just one participant at a time. We present here a method to connect and synchronize two faraway neuromagnetometers. With this method, two participants at two separate sites can interact with each other through a stable real-time audio connection with minimal delay and jitter. The magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and audio recordings of both laboratories are accurately synchronized for joint offline analysis. The concept can be extended to connecting multiple MEG devices around the world. As a proof of concept of the MEG-to-MEG link, we report the results of time-sensitive recordings of cortical evoked responses to sounds delivered at laboratories separated by 5 km.

Keywords: MEG; auditory cortex; dual recording; magnetoencephalography; social interaction; synchronization.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematics of the MEG-to-MEG link and examples of ongoing MEG signals. Subjects seated in laboratories 5 km apart are communicating via landline phones during the MEG measurement. The experimenters at both sites can monitor online both data acquisition audio communication. The audio recording computer sends digital timing signals to the MEG data acquisition computers at both sites. Examples of the 10 s MEG signals from four temporal-lobe and four occipital-lobe gradiometers are given below, passband 0.1–40 Hz. The two lowest traces show the audio recording of speech while the participants counted numbers in alternation.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Source waveforms of averaged auditory evoked fields from both participants to tones presented locally (black lines) and remotely (red lines), separately for the left and right hemisphere. The superimposed traces illustrate replications of the same stimulus block. Please note that we did not rigorously control the sound intensities in this proof-of-the-concept experiment, and thus the early difference between local and remote sound presentations in the left hemisphere of the BRU subject likely reflects differences in sound quality.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Anders S., Heinzle J., Weiskopf N., Ethofer T., Haynes J. D. (2011). Flow of affective information between communicating brains. Neuroimage 54, 439–446 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.07.004 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Astolfi L., Cincotti F., Mattia D., De Vico Fallani F., Salinari S., Vecchiato G., Toppi J., Wilke C., Doud A., Yuan H., He B., Babiloni F. (2010a). Imaging the social brain: multi-subjects EEG recordings during the “Chicken's game”. Conf. Proc. IEEE Eng. Med. Biol. Soc. 2010, 21734–1737 10.1109/IEMBS.2010.5626708 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Astolfi L., Toppi J., De Vico Fallani F., Vecchiato G., Salinari S., Mattia D., Cincotti F., Babiloni F. (2010b). Neuroelectrical hyperscanning measures simultaneous brain activity in humans. Brain Topogr. 23, 243–256 10.1007/s10548-010-0147-9 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Babiloni F., Cincotti F., Mattia D., De Vico Fallani F., Tocci A., Bianchi L., Salinari S., Marciani M., Colosimo A., Astolfi L. (2007). High resolution EEG hyperscanning during a card game. Conf. Proc. IEEE Eng. Med. Biol. Soc. 2007, 4957–4960 10.1109/IEMBS.2007.4353453 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Babiloni F., Cincotti F., Mattia D., Mattiocco M., De Vico Fallani F., Tocci A., Bianchi L., Marciani M. G., Astolfi L. (2006). Hypermethods for EEG hyperscanning. Conf. Proc. IEEE Eng. Med. Biol. Soc. 1, 3666–3669 10.1109/IEMBS.2006.260754 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources