How a speaker herds the audience: Multi-brain neural convergence over time during naturalistic storytelling.

ABSTRACT: Storytelling-an ancient way for humans to share individual experiences with others-has been found to induce neural synchronization among listeners. In our exploration of the dynamic fluctuations in listener-listener (LL) coupling throughout stories, we uncover a significant correlation between LL and lag-speaker-listener (lag-SL) couplings over time. Using the analogy of neural pattern (dis)similarity as distances between participants, we term this phenomenon the "herding effect": like a shepherd guiding a group of sheep, the more closely listeners follow the speaker's prior brain activity patterns (higher lag-SL similarity), the more tightly they cluster together (higher LL similarity). This herding effect is particularly pronounced in brain regions where neural synchronization among list

SUBMITTER: Chang CHC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10592711 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature