Brain to Brain Synchronization and the role of the shared semantics

ended

A successful verbal communication demands mutual attentiveness and intelligibility of speech. Nevertheless, to transmit certain meaning, alignment between interlocutors according to their concepts and representations is also necessary. Recently, it has been shown (by the applicant and others) that a successful linguistic interaction is related to interbrain coupling. However, the role played by the inter-brain synchronization of oscillatory activity, for the two persons to understand each other is still not known. We propose a research agenda that aims at discovering the interplay between semantics and brain-to-brain synchronization. We will use coupled participants to analyze the inter-brain synchronization patterns underlying successful and disrupted verbal communication. Specifically, we will study two persons engaged in a seemingly natural linguistic, communicative scenario while simultaneously recording EEG brain activity. Using two different types of transcranial electric stimulation, we will study the contributions of a shared meaning to the inter-brain synchronization. In the proposed research, we will use TMS to disrupt semantic-specific brain regions to determine how experimentally-impaired communication modulates interbrain synchronization. Also, we will use tACS to manipulate neural coupling between participants trying to modulate mutual comprehension. Our study will thus provide important and novel evidence for the underlying interbrain patterns during effective communication and concerning whether interbrain phase coupling and mutual understanding are jointly modulated (linked). Results here would be opening the door to the quantification of linguistic interactions. In turn, they might suggest new methods for enhancing verbal communication in populations with meaning transmission deficits. Also has the potential to enable the implementation of methods and devices with the intended purpose of measurement and intervention over the interbrain coupling.