The BetweenTwoBrains project employed a multifaceted approach, combining cutting-edge technologies and analytical methods to study social collaboration. The work began with creating a comprehensive library of realistic 3D animations depicting a wide range of dyadic social interactions. These animations were developed using motion capture technology to record professional actors improvising common social scenarios, ensuring the stimuli were as naturalistic as possible.
Building on this foundation, the project conducted a series of neuroimaging experiments using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine the oscillatory neural networks engaged during social collaboration observation. These experiments employed high-resolution MEG with sophisticated data processing techniques to capture detailed brain activity patterns. Complementing the neuroimaging work, behavioural experiments were conducted to analyse interpersonal kinematics in social interactions, focusing on aspects such as distance, synchrony, and causality.
The project also delved into clinical aspects, investigating links between autism traits, psychosis risk, and perception of social synchronisation. This involved using various psychometric tools, including the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and Prodromal Questionnaire-16 (PQ-16). Data analysis was a crucial component of the project, implementing advanced multivariate pattern analyses and applying machine learning techniques to model synchronisation factors influencing perceptions of collaborative success.
The project's main results were multifaceted and groundbreaking. Regarding neural mechanisms of social perception, the research identified a distinct spatiotemporal arc in the perception of social interaction, involving initial sharpening (weighting of prior social information) followed by dampening (suppression of that information). These processes were found to be distributed across various brain regions, including early visual areas, the social visual stream, and the dorsal visual area.
Analysis of interpersonal kinematics revealed that causality was the strongest predictor of perceived collaborative success, followed by synchrony and distance. This provides valuable insights into how people evaluate individual collaboration based on movement patterns. In the realm of autism and psychosis risk, the project discovered that psychosis risk may have a greater impact than autistic traits on sensitivity to interpersonal synchronisation prediction violations and found a significant positive correlation between psychosis risk and autistic traits.
The project's results were disseminated through various channels, including journal publications in peer-reviewed international journals, conference presentations, public outreach activities, and workshops. This comprehensive dissemination strategy ensured that the project's findings reached the scientific community and the broader public.
