This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The closer two people grow, the more alike their brains work—or so the assumption goes. Two ETH Zurich studies challenge this idea by examining the brain activity of younger and older adults who drew together over several weeks.
Despite growing closer, the similarity of their brain activity did not simply increase. What happens in the brain when two people engage in joint creative activity and build a new relationship with one another in the process? ETH cognitive scientist Ryssa Moffat investigated this question.
She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Social Brain Sciences Lab within the Chair of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. Her study has now been published in the journal PLOS Biology. The setting was as follows: Over a period of six weeks, 61 pairs met six times to draw together.
The participants came from a younger age group (18 to 35 years) and an older age group (70 to 85 years) and were divided into 31 cross-generational pairs and 30 pairs of the same age. At the outset, the participants did not know each other and first had to become familiar with one another. At each session, the pairs first drew individually on separate sheets of paper, then drew together twice on a single sheet of paper.
They were free to decide whether to take turns or draw simultaneously. They were allowed to converse throughout the session but were instructed to remain silent while drawing. At each session, the researchers recorded participants' brain activity with wearable brain sensors.
This enabled the researchers to investigate how the process of getting to know one another was reflected in the pairs' brain activity. At the same time, the mobile sensors ensured that participants could move and respond to each other naturally, as in everyday life, without distorting the recorded signals. The similarity of brain activity was particularly crucial for the ETH researchers: To what extent do the brains of two people synchronize during an encounter?
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