How does your brain respond to video conferencing?

[New Sancai Compilation First Release] You may be talking to a real person on a video conferencing system, but to your brain it’s not the same as a face-to-face conversation.

New research using sophisticated imaging tools has found that the brain activity of a person having a conversation looks different from the brain activity of two people talking on a video conferencing system.

"In this study, we found that the human brain's social system is more active during real face-to-face encounters than during video conferencing systems," said senior author Joy Hirsch. She is professor of psychiatry, comparative medicine, and neuroscience at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

"Compared to face-to-face situations, video conferencing systems seem to be an impoverished social communication system," she explains.

Most previous studies using imaging tools to track brain activity have involved single individuals rather than pairs of individuals in natural settings.

Researchers note that the human brain processes facial cues well during face-to-face encounters.

In the study, which documented neurological responses during two types of conversations, increased neural signaling between participants in face-to-face conversations was associated with increased gaze duration and pupil widening.

This indicates increased arousal in both brains.

Participants who interacted face-to-face also experienced increased brain wave activity, a signature of increased face processing, the study authors said.

The researchers also found that neural activity between the brains of people talking face-to-face was more coordinated. The authors say this shows increased reciprocal exchange of social cues between the two people.

"Overall, the dynamics and natural social interactions that occur spontaneously in face-to-face interactions appear to be less pronounced or absent in video conferencing," Hirsch said. "That's a very powerful effect."

Immediate, face-to-face interaction is important for humans' natural social behavior, Hirsch said. "Online facial representations, at least with current technology, do not have the same 'privileged access' to the social neural circuits in the brain as the real thing," she said.

The research results were published in the journal Imaging Neuroscience on October 25.

(Compiled by: Wang Jimin)

(Editor: Jiang Qiming)

(Source of the article: First published by Xinsancai)