Data_Sheet_1_Hybrid Harmony: A Multi-Person Neurofeedback Application for Interpersonal Synchrony.pdf

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in studies measuring brain activity, physiological responses, and/or movement data from multiple individuals during social interaction. For example, so-called “hyperscanning” research has demonstrated that brain activity may become synchronized across people as a function of a range of factors. Such findings not only underscore the potential of hyperscanning techniques to capture meaningful aspects of naturalistic interactions, but also raise the possibility that hyperscanning can be leveraged as a tool to help improve such naturalistic interactions. Building on our previous work showing that exposing dyads to real-time inter-brain synchrony neurofeedback may help boost their interpersonal connectedness, we describe the biofeedback application Hybrid Harmony, a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) that supports the simultaneous recording of multiple neurophysiological datastreams and the real-time visualization and sonification of inter-subject synchrony. We report results from 236 dyads experiencing synchrony neurofeedback during naturalistic face-to-face interactions, and show that pairs' social closeness and affective personality traits can be reliably captured with the inter-brain synchrony neurofeedback protocol, which incorporates several different online inter-subject connectivity analyses that can be applied interchangeably. Hybrid Harmony can be used by researchers who wish to study the effects of synchrony biofeedback, and by biofeedback artists and serious game developers who wish to incorporate multiplayer situations into their practice.

近年来，针对多人社交互动过程中大脑活动、生理反应及/或运动数据的测量研究数量呈现显著增长。例如，所谓的“超扫描（hyperscanning）”研究已证实，个体间的大脑活动可因一系列因素而产生同步现象。此类研究结果不仅凸显了超扫描技术在捕捉自然社交互动关键特征方面的潜力，同时也揭示了超扫描可作为辅助优化这类自然互动的工具的可能性。基于我们此前的研究——即让双人组接收实时脑间同步神经反馈，有助于提升其人际联结感——本文介绍了一款名为Hybrid Harmony的生物反馈应用程序，它属于脑机接口（Brain-Computer Interface, BCI），支持同时记录多通道神经生理数据流，并可对被试间同步性进行实时可视化与听觉化呈现。我们报告了236组双人在自然面对面互动过程中接收同步神经反馈的实验结果，并证实：通过整合多种可互换使用的在线被试间连通性分析的脑间同步神经反馈范式，可可靠地捕捉到双人组的社交亲密度与情感型人格特质。Hybrid Harmony可被两类用户使用：一类是希望研究同步生物反馈效果的研究人员，另一类是希望将多人互动场景融入其创作实践的生物反馈艺术家与严肃游戏开发者。