There are expressions that we repeat without thinking too much about them. “We have a lot of chemistry”, “We connected from the first moment”, or one of the most popular: “We are on the same wavelength”. For decades it seemed like just a metaphor. A poetic way to describe that feeling of understanding each other without hardly speaking. However, an international group of Neuroscientists have been trying to find out if, at least in part, this intuition has a biological basis for more than ten years.
The answer is surprising: yes… although not exactly as we usually imagine. In a study published in Trends in Cognitive Sciencesscientists from New York University, Ghent University and the University of Montreal, led by Suzanne Dikker, have shown that, during certain social interactions, The electrical activity of the brains of two people can be partially synchronized. It does not mean that both think the same, much less that one can read the other’s mind. What coincides are certain electrical rhythms that reflect how both brains process the same shared experience.
The protagonist of this story is electroencephalography, better known as EEG. It is a technique used for almost a century that records brain electrical activity using small electrodes placed on the scalp.. Each of those impulses generates oscillations, known as brain waves, that continually change while we pay attention, learn, converse, or simply rest.
For a long time, neuroscientists studied these waves individually. But Dikker’s team decided to ask a different question: what happens when we stop observing an isolated brain and analyze two or hundreds of them at the same time? And for this they left the laboratory. Instead of just recruiting volunteers sitting in front of a computer, They took their portable devices to schools, museums, music festivals, and even art performances. Thousands of people agreed to wear an EEG headset while talking, collaborating, playing games, or attending a shared experience.
Among the participants were friends, family, strangers… and even artists like Bad Bunny, Residente, Marina Abramović, Mike Gordon and Bob Weir. One of the most striking experiments took place in 2019, when Bad Bunny and Residente composed the song together Bellacoso. As they worked, the scientists recorded the synchronization of their brain waves in real time. and they showed them how it changed according to the different creative strategies they used.
The collaboration between Yale and the Puerto Rican singer was so fruitful that a professorship titled Bad Bunny: Musical and political aesthetics. But the concerts and recording studios were only part of the project. Perhaps one of the most interesting results appeared in the classrooms. By studying groups of high school students, the team observed that the greater the synchronization of brain activity between classmates during classesthe more likely they were to report feeling comfortable with the other students… and even with the subject itself.
It wasn’t that brains copied exactly the same electrical pattern. What coincided were certain rhythms associated with shared attention, communication, and joint processing of information. Dikker’s team named this phenomenon social synchrony. The results showed that this synchronization does not depend solely on the brain. It also involves language, gestures, gaze, the rhythm of conversation and even small body movements that we make unconsciously when we interact with another person.
We have all experienced something similar. Two friends finishing each other’s sentences. People who start walking at the same pace without trying. Conversations in which the pauses seem perfectly coordinated. Brain synchrony could be another manifestation of that same phenomenon. However, the authors insist on placing limits on interpretation. Just because two brains are synchronized does not mean that they share thoughts, emotions or memories. Nor does it imply a mysterious connection or some kind of telepathy. The synchronization reflects, above all, that both brains are responding in a similar way to a shared experience and paying attention to the same stimuli.
In other words, it is not that two people think exactly the same, but that for a few moments their brains “dance” to the same rhythm. The research also points to possible practical applications. Previous studies have already observed that people who suffer from social isolation tend to show brain patterns that are less linked to the group during interactions. That is why the team believes that Enhancing this synchrony could one day help in areas such as education or even psychological therapy.. In fact, Dikker’s team has already received funding of four million dollars from the US agency ARPA-H to investigate how to take advantage of this phenomenon in clinical contexts and improve the relationship between therapists and patients.
The idea is ambitious. Dikker’s team’s research not only measured synchronization, but tried to deliberately increase it. This change of focus, from measuring to trying to “engineer” the social connection, is one of the biggest objectives and Dikker defines it perfectly: “We didn’t just want to measure that feeling of being on the same wavelength; we wanted to learn how to enhance it.”