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. 2019 Sep 4;9(1):12747.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-49257-z.

Prior physical synchrony enhances rapport and inter-brain synchronization during subsequent educational communication

Affiliations

Prior physical synchrony enhances rapport and inter-brain synchronization during subsequent educational communication

Takayuki Nozawa et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Physical synchrony has been suggested to have positive effects on not only concurrent but also subsequent communication, but the underlying neural processes are unclear. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning, we tested the effects of preceding physical synchrony on subsequent dyadic teaching-learning communication. Thirty-two pairs of participants performed two experimental sessions. In each session, they underwent a rhythmic arm movement block with synchronous or asynchronous conditions, and then taught/learned unknown words to/from each other according to a given scenario. Neural activities in their medial and left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) were measured and inter-brain synchronization (IBS) during the teaching-learning blocks was evaluated. Participants rated their subjective rapport during the teaching-learning blocks, and took a word memory test. The analyses revealed that (1) prior physical synchrony enhanced teacher-learner rapport; (2) prior physical synchrony also enhanced IBS in the lateral PFC; and (3) IBS changes correlated positively with rapport changes. Physical synchrony did however not affect word memory performance. These results suggest that IBS can be useful to measure the effects of social-bonding facilitation activities for educational communication.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental procedure and fNIRS measurement setup. (a) Flow of the experiment, with snapshots of the rhythmic movement (Sync, synchronous; Async, asynchronous arm movements) and the word teaching-learning blocks. (b) Configuration of the fNIRS optodes, channels, and their placement on the prefrontal region. See Methods for details on the deep (3-cm-SD) and shallow (1-cm-SD) channels. (c) fNIRS channel positions projected on the normalized Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) brain template, estimated using virtual registration. The red spheres indicate the 3-cm-SD channels, which are located in the middle between the light sources and the 3-cm detectors. The visualization was created using BrainNet Viewer. (d) Spatial sensitivity profile of the two channels to cortical absorption changes, obtained by using AtlasViewer software. Warmer colours indicate higher sensitivity. A Monte-Carlo random walk-based photon migration simulation was conducted using tMCimg software, and the volumetric sensitivity in the grey matter was projected onto the surface of the Colin27 brain atlas in AtlasViewer.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Subjective rapport during the word teaching-learning task after experiencing physical synchrony/asynchrony. Box plots show the median, interquartile range (IQR), and minimum/maximum values of the average rapport ratings during the teaching-learning block of all dyads for the two conditions of the preceding rhythmic movement block (Sync, synchronous; Async, asynchronous arm movements). Grey points with connecting lines represent the two conditions of each dyad.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Word memory test scores after experiencing physical synchrony (Sync)/asynchrony (Async). (a) Total scores. (b) Separate scores for words experienced either as a teacher or as a student. See the caption of Fig. 2 for box plot notations.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Inter-brain synchronization (IBS) in the left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC; a) and the medial PFC (b) during the word teaching-learning task after experiencing physical synchrony/asynchrony. See the caption of Fig. 2 for box plot notations. WTC, wavelet transform coherence (see main text for details).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Within-pair correlation between inter-brain synchronization (IBS) in the left lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and rapport ratings during the word teaching-learning task modulated by prior synchronous (Sync) and asynchronous (Async) physical movements. Coloured points (•, ×) represent the two conditions of each dyad. Coloured lines represent the best linear fit for each dyad estimated by the repeated measures correlation, using the same slope and varying intercepts.

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