TY - JOUR
T1 - Cerebral coherence between communicators marks the emergence of meaning
AU - Stolk, Arjen
AU - Noordzij, Matthijs L.
AU - Verhagen, Lennart
AU - Volman, Inge
AU - Schoffelen, Jan-Mathijs
AU - Oostenveld, Robert
AU - Hagoort, Peter
AU - Toni, Ivan
PY - 2014/10/31
Y1 - 2014/10/31
N2 - How can we understand each other during communicative interactions? An influential suggestion holds that communicators are primed by each other’s behaviors, with associative mechanisms automatically coordinating the production of communicative signals and the comprehension of their meanings. An alternative suggestion posits that mutual understanding requires shared conceptualizations of a signal’s use, i.e., “conceptual pacts” that are abstracted away from specific experiences. Both accounts predict coherent neural dynamics across communicators, aligned either to the occurrence of a signal or to the dynamics of conceptual pacts. Using coherence spectral-density analysis of cerebral activity simultaneously measured in pairs of communicators, this study shows that establishing mutual understanding of novel signals synchronizes cerebral dynamics across communicators’ right temporal lobes. This interpersonal cerebral coherence occurred only within pairs with a shared communicative history, and at temporal scales independent from signals’ occurrences. These findings favor the notion that meaning emerges from shared conceptualizations of a signal’s use.
AB - How can we understand each other during communicative interactions? An influential suggestion holds that communicators are primed by each other’s behaviors, with associative mechanisms automatically coordinating the production of communicative signals and the comprehension of their meanings. An alternative suggestion posits that mutual understanding requires shared conceptualizations of a signal’s use, i.e., “conceptual pacts” that are abstracted away from specific experiences. Both accounts predict coherent neural dynamics across communicators, aligned either to the occurrence of a signal or to the dynamics of conceptual pacts. Using coherence spectral-density analysis of cerebral activity simultaneously measured in pairs of communicators, this study shows that establishing mutual understanding of novel signals synchronizes cerebral dynamics across communicators’ right temporal lobes. This interpersonal cerebral coherence occurred only within pairs with a shared communicative history, and at temporal scales independent from signals’ occurrences. These findings favor the notion that meaning emerges from shared conceptualizations of a signal’s use.
UR - http://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1414886111/-/DCSupplemental
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1414886111
DO - 10.1073/pnas.1414886111
M3 - Article
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 111
SP - 18183
EP - 18188
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 51
ER -