Effective connectivity network in socially communicating brains: an EEG/fNIRS study

Abstract

This talk presents our recent progress in the EEG/fNIRS hyperscanning studies, focusing on the within-brain and across-brains network during social communications. A benefit of using EEG/fNIRS in communication study is that participants are able to naturally interact under real-world settings. First, we show that the eye-to-eye experiment as a nonverbal communication experiment, in which a dyad gazed into either the partner's live eyes or their picture eyes. The eye contact with live partner modulated both within-brain and across-brains effective connectivity originated from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to eye contact with a face picture. Second, our verbal communication study revealed a bidirectional effective connectivity between motor and sensory language areas in a listener's brain during dialogue but not during monologue conditions. Elucidating the neural basis of social communication has the potential to establish biomedical applications such as assessment and assistance of social communication for people with autistic spectrum disorders.