Table 4.

Recent Hyperscanning Studies

Dikker et al.97 used EEG hyperscanning to evaluate the potential link between the collective behavior of a classroom—a typical physical community—and the interbrain synchrony between its members over 11 different school days. Their result shows that interbrain synchrony is a direct biomarker of the quality of interactions of the community. Specifically, it is directly connected to the social dynamics of the classroom: the higher the interbrain synchrony, the better the levels of engagement and social closeness. A similar result was reported by Reinero et al.,28 who used EEG hyperscanning to explore the effects of collective behaviors within small groups.

These studies also suggest that interbrain synchrony is the outcome of the “joint attention” of the community, the experience of a group of individuals who know that they are attending to something in common.98 In fact, joint attention tunes the neural oscillations to the temporal structure of the common context through eye contact and the exchange of glances (mutual gaze)98: “prior eye contact potentially creates a context for joint attention, which subsequently induces higher interbrain synchrony.” (p. R347).

EEG, electroencephalogram.