Abstract
The present study examined the neural mechanisms underlying the inter-brain processing during cooperation in a two-person computer game. We simultaneously measured pairs of participants’ fronto-parietal activations during the game using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). One participant’s task was to build a target pattern by placing disks on a monitor as a builder, while another helped (cooperation) or disrupted (competition) the builder’s process as a companion. The NIRS data demonstrated two findings: (1) The builder showed higher activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) under the cooperation condition than under the competition condition, while the companion showed a reversed pattern. (2) The right IFG activations of the builder-companion pairs showed a positive inter-brain correlation under the cooperation condition. These results suggest that the leading player is actively engaged in achieving a goal regardless of task type, but the inter-brain synchronization emerges only during cooperation as their shared attention and/or empathic processing.
