A unifying mechanism governing inter-brain neural relationship during social interactions

Abstract
Data availability
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Abstract

A key goal of social neuroscience is to understand the inter-brain neural relationship - the relationship between the neural activity of socially interacting individuals. Decades of research investigating this relationship have focused on the similarity in neural activity across brains. Here we instead asked how neural activity differs between brains, and how that difference evolves alongside activity patterns shared between brains. Applying this framework to bats engaged in spontaneous social interactions revealed two complementary phenomena characterizing the inter-brain neural relationship: fast fluctuations of activity difference across brains unfolding in parallel with slow activity covariation across brains. A model reproduced these observations and generated multiple predictions that we confirmed using experimental data involving pairs of bats and a larger social group of bats. The model suggests that a simple computational mechanism involving positive and negative feedback could explain diverse experimental observations regarding the inter-brain neural relationship.

Data availability

Source code for the models is available at https://github.com/zhangwujie/Neurobat-lab-codes/tree/master/Interbrain-model

The following data sets were generated

1. Zhang W
(2022) Code for modeling the relationship between the neural activity of socially interating bats
GitHub.

https://github.com/zhangwujie/Neurobat-lab-codes/tree/master/Interbrain-model

Article and author information

Author details

Wujie Zhang

Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States

For correspondence
wujie@berkeley.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Maimon C Rose

Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Michael M Yartsev

Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States

For correspondence
myartsev@berkeley.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0952-2801

Funding

National Institutes of Health (DP2-DC016163)

Michael M Yartsev

Dana Foundation

Michael M Yartsev

National Institute of Mental Health (1-R01MH25387-01)

Michael M Yartsev

New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF-R-NI40)

Michael M Yartsev

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (FG-2017-9646)

Michael M Yartsev

Brain Research Foundation (BRFSG-2017-09)

Michael M Yartsev

National Science Foundation (NSF- 1550818)

Michael M Yartsev

Packard Fellowship (2017-66825)

Michael M Yartsev

Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship

Michael M Yartsev

Pew Charitable Trust (00029645)

Michael M Yartsev

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All experimental procedures complied with all relevant ethical regulations for animal testing and research and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of California, Berkeley (protocol number AUP-2015-01-7122-2).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.