What binds us? Inter-brain neural synchronization and its implications...

What binds us? Inter-brain neural synchronization and its implications for theories of human consciousness

Ana Lucía Valencia, Tom Froese

The association between neural oscillations and functional integration is widely recognized in the study of human cognition. Large-scale synchronization of neural activity has also been proposed as the neural basis of consciousness. Intriguingly, a growing number of studies in social cognitive neuroscience reveal that phase synchronization similarly appears across brains during meaningful social interaction. Moreover, this inter-brain synchronization has been associated with subjective reports of social connectedness, engagement, and cooperativeness, as well as experiences of social cohesion and ‘self-other merging’. These findings challenge the standard view of human consciousness as essentially first-person singular and private. We therefore revisit the recent controversy over the possibility of extended consciousness and argue that evidence of inter-brain synchronization in the fastest frequency bands overcomes the hitherto most convincing sceptical position. If this proposal is on the right track, our understanding of human consciousness would be profoundly transformed, and we propose a method to test this proposal experimentally.

Moreover, a recent study revealed that participants playing a cooperation game face-to-face exhibit differences in brain-to-brain synchronization when they believe they are interacting with each other compared to when they believe their interaction is with a computer. In this experimental setup, the prompts ‘your partner is a human’ and ‘your partner is a computer’ were provided before each condition (human–human or human–machine), and every dyad went through both conditions in the same session. Even though in both conditions the interaction was with the partner, believing otherwise had a strong effect on hyper-connectivity (Hu et al. 2018). This may reflect the effects of different levels of engagement (Schilbach et al. 2013).

By eliminating Clark’s frequency-based objection, we propose that the boundaries of the conscious mind could also be subject to constant renegotiation during an individual’s interaction with his/her environment and with others, pointing to a mechanism that neurally binds us together and opens us up to an extended conscious mind in social interaction (Kelso and Engstrom 2006). An upshot of this proposal is that it can potentially validate our most intimate experiences: when we become aware that ‘we’ are sharing a moment with someone else, it is no longer necessarily the case that we are fundamentally separated by our distinct heads—we could really be two distinct individuals sharing in one and the same unfolding experience (Froese 2018).

To be clear this extended mind isn't (AFAICTell) referencing Psi...but I await Max's thoughts on this at it seems to tie into some of the shared information ideas he's talked about...

...assuming I've managed to correctly grasp his ideas...