Abstract
How the brain responds in real-world social tasks remains largely unknown. Our goal was to determine cortical responses related to social interaction using fMRI, fNIRS and other physiological measures including heart rate variability (HRV). We investigated two naturalistic social tasks, guitar playing and a cooperative puzzle game. For guitar, we contrasted frontal lobe activity recorded using fNIRS during improvised blues to pentatonic scales, while for the cooperative game, we compared differences in affect, HRV and ability to cooperate across individuals and culture. Results show areas localized to creativity and affect are recruited significantly higher in improvised guitar compared to scales. Results of the cooperative game indicate the temporal-parietal junction, considered a social nexus area, displays increased activity during poor cooperation compared to good. Increased affect and decreased HRV was found in Japanese compared to Americans at the game while Japanese had a significantly higher success rate. These results suggest a multimodal approach to studies of brain function may be useful to determine detailed brain responses in naturalistic social environments.
