Researchers demonstrated that the brains of people playing an online game together were synchronized without physical presence.
Online gaming and other types of online social interaction have become increasingly popular during the COVID pandemic. This trend is likely to continue due to increased remote working and investments in social technology.
Previous research has shown that people’s brains activate in a similar and simultaneous way during social interaction. Such inter-brain neural synchronization has been associated with empathy and cooperation in face-to-face situations. However, its role in online, remote interaction has remained unknown.
A new study conducted at the University of Helsinki investigated brainwave synchronization while pairs of subjects played a game in which they controlled a racing car together. The subjects were physically separated into two soundproof rooms. The researchers investigated the connection of synchronization with interaction and performance in the game.
Based on the results, inter-brain synchronization occurs during cooperative online gaming. Furthermore, increased synchrony in the alpha and gamma frequency bands is connected with better performance. The connection between performance and gamma-synchronization could be observed continuously over time.
“We were able to show that inter-brain phase synchronization can occur without the presence of the other person. This opens up a possibility to investigate the role of this social brain mechanism in online interaction,” says Valtteri Wikström, a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki.
Toward Better Online Interaction
Our social brain has developed in face-to-face communication. Increased screen time has caused concern in many people, especially among parents, teachers, and legislators.
“If we can build interactive digital experiences which activate fundamental mechanisms of empathy, it can lead to better social relationships, well-being, and productivity online,” says Project Manager Katri Saarikivi.
Wikström suggests that measures of physiological synchrony and cooperative performance might be used to assess the quality of social interaction. Finding out which features of the interfaces enhance understanding and connectedness can drive the development in a positive direction.
“This study shows that inter-brain synchronization happens also during cooperative online gaming, and that it can be reliably measured. Developing aspects in games that lead to increased synchronization and empathy can have a positive impact even outside of gaming,” Wikström adds.
Reference: “Inter-brain synchronization occurs without physical co-presence during cooperative online gaming” by Valtteri Wikström, Katri Saarikivi, Mari Falcon, Tommi Makkonen, Silja Martikainen, Vesa Putkinen, Benjamin Ultan Cowley and Mari Tervaniemi, 20 July 2022, Neuropsychologia.
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108316
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28 Comments
The idea is that the brain is revealing what it is processing… not that the brains are actually in sync from a distance – not anymore than clocks being generally syncronized from one house to another – but because they’re linked directly, but because they’re set by those who agree on the time and that agreement is based upon physical processes which people agree is happening because those things happen without our permission. The brain is just doing the same thing… its little hand and big hand are pointing in the directions as the other ones because they’re responding to the same environment. Yes, that creates a “connection” in a sense. But that thread is easy to find. Yes, one perceiver is able to envision what it is likely happening with the other perceiver… because the imagination runs simulations, and programs are simulations, so simulating a simulation is fine. There becomes a lengthy regress and then you realize that it’s either all one simulation or it’s all reality. Either way, it’s within the same framework, and the brain is built within that framework, which makes the brains within that framework connected by default. So, everything is orientated towards syncronization – even those things which appear at first to contradict the system, they don’t actually. They’re doing -their- part. It’s the observation and the questioning that allows the system to be perceived and tested that creates the supposed anomaly of “opinion” at any rate. It’s not something mind-blowing or that needs to be proven. At any given moment, a bunch of people are peeing right now. Maybe they’re psychic…
Replace one of the “but”s above with a “not”. It will make one of those statements make more sense, and the others not so much. Enjoy.
To simplify. The brains are NOT snycronized, but, it’s simply two brains, trying via a game, trying to accomplish the same thing, at the same moment. A seriously flawed study, given way to much weight, due to relatively simply overlooked flaws. In other words, simply BS!!!
This study does not prove any synchronization. Poor science without a control group as well, and needs a better question to determine synchronization. Plus an activity that is not a shared with further distance between them. If these chosen people spend any time together in activities other than this, this in itself would help determine whether one would be synchronized or not.
Hedgepeth, sounds like your spot on in your observation of their testing set up.
Perhaps, no audio or video cues. Just a headset and a blank sheet of paper. If the participants can write the same sentence or draw the same picture we may be into something.
Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep
Highly linearly independent and immense narrow bandwidth
Highly linearly independent and immensely narrow bandwidth
Tarzan, have you noticed how many of these popular article summaries of scientific findings desperately grasp at trying to persuade people of mystical metaphysical mechanisims?
Tarzan, nicely done my friend.
Im not into too many patterns, but you gotta love the way us creatures are created to create in and of the same image their original creator
That could sound religious,or mathmatical, or…
Sometimes the truth is lost in the words that are said, but it’s also about the ears that hear em!
Dug your post fur real…
I need more information about the study to ascertain whether or not there is anything to it.
I also appreciate your post Tarzan. Your mind works well. I don’t often encounter other beings with this level of logic processing. Very refreshing, and makes me feel less alone in this world.
Who would’ve thought I’d find people like you guys here.
Haha in some ways though, not too surprising.
Tarzan, great way to kill an article, this makes me not trust anything from SciTech if they don’t remove this terrible (to be nice) article and this is what we get from Universities? University Of Helsinki should be ashamed as well..
Uhhh were these studies done by out of touch people? If the goal is to drive a car, you allow one person to operate the pedals and another uses the steering wheel, that isn’t synchronation of their brains. They have a task, and a specific set of actions to complete that task. It’s just working together with what you’re given, it doesn’t require any actual communication because most people have driven a car,and know how hard to turn and how hard to accelerate/brake given a visual orientation. What a waste of time and resources 🤡
What a great news for me. I’ve married my teammate 5 years ago, so the researchers are a bit behind with this discovery.
I can’t take seriously any publication that post this hilariously unscientific “study”.
Soul can send vibration of happiness or stress to other individual. You can see people saying about other peoples presences like i got pissed off just by seing his picture. People keep gods picture like Jesus krishna etc.
The people behind this article are keepers of a knowledge that they are slowly trying to numb us for the great reveal of another lie.
Syncopated gamma frequency, or even (instantaneous) quantum entanglement?
If it’s gamma mechanism,, they’re vibrating on the same frequencies on a NEARLY instantaneous timeframe. If it’s quantum entanglement, they could be vibrating together on an INSTANTANEOUS timeframe.
I’d like to see the same study, but at a further distance – and with people who have close relationships versus strangers.
If I’m correct, two people with extremely close relationships (for instance a married couple) should be able to defy gamma speed in relation to thier simultaneous reaction, due to quantum entanglement. Strangers might be closer to a gamma-speed reaction synchronization.
The married couple, due to quantum entanglement might even be able to synchronize at speeds which “defy” the “speed of light”.
So, if you test a married couple or even two best friends against two total strangers at significant distance, the couple should synchronize at a closer timing than the strangers- due to quantum entanglement. The strangers should be more or less stuck at a “higher ping”, psychically.
But what do I know.
Double blind it.
I see a lot of nay sayers doing their very best to refute the evidence based upon their ignorance, but as a mindfulness meditation and teacher I can assure any reader that there is bucket loads of imperial evidence to show synchronization in heart beat and brainwaves between people who work together, meditate together or just sit together and this includes things as diverse as female menstruations. Do your research, know your subjects
Can a brain talk with another brain by “waves”?
Michael Faraday discovered
that “Electromagnetic waves are produced whenever electric charges are accelerated. This makes it possible to produce electromagnetic waves by letting an alternating current flow through a wire, an antenna”
The brain is made of tiny conductors that when a pulse of electricuty passes through certainly produces an EMF, a wave. Its not acertained whether its radio waves or other but Im convinced its a complex of emf waves with varying frequencies. The entire body itself produces static magnetic energy around it all the time but emf can also be created by the brain since all it takes is to alternate the current or direction of pulse rapidly. Nothing is new. Telepathy, the phenomenon of comminucating by mind is just science.
Conductors also tap moving emf or waves and convert them back to electricity. We just dont appreciate it nor understand it yet.
Im personally convince that we do have life in pure energy. What is needed to have living things is not just atoms but energy. Atoms are phycical and viaible but what if we had living things having emf energy alone?
Thats exactly what angels are made of. Can they pass through walls? Do they move at a high speed? We have to question why science stopped at the atom and didnt go beyond it; which is life from pure emf energies.
So yes people working together at a great distance can sync in thought patterns. The more they know each other already the more their brain can ‘decode’ the thoughts they are emitting. Just as 2 radios need to be tuned in to the same frequency to communicate so also humans need to tuned in or the brains will receive but not able to understand the messages. Its my idea not everybody but i think it can be backed up if we dont pretend that we dont have enough evidence to back it up.
Both parties of opinions, unfortunately, can’t be neutral while judging.
It seems, at least to me, that “Judging” is kind of an affair like “Impossible Mission”.
From both parts, it is very easy, to smell odors of pure deities against pure materialism.
Nobody can judge while being mentally, and sometime emotionally, clearly aligned to a strict team.
really, f*king really? two brains confronted with identical stimulus, working in parallel to accomplish the same task, for some inexplicable reason, have similar brainwave patterns?
incredible. absolutely phenomenal.
Without Tarzan’s overly blabbering and tech mumbo jumbo, it is simply a process of understanding and engaging upon some of the fundamentals of AI and common sense. If both subjects are told to do something they know of they will do it planets apart and the game is the common thread that connects them, the source if you will, not any waves 👋 They could beat eggs apart or anything they both know of (presumably) for that matter because some processes simply are.. simple.. and common sense dictates what is to be done, sometimes with few ways or tropes.
°°°
Well, it’s here. Someone over in Italy put a wave link in my brain and I haven’t slept in three days. And top it off I didn’t even know this existed and was not asked nor given a chance to agree to it. Oh and I live in the US.