Finnish study claims our brains sync-up while gaming together
Researchers at the University of Helsinki have published a study that examines the brainwave synchronisation of people playing a simple driving game in pairs. The headline claim, of course, is that the results suggest peoples' brainwaves synchronise while playing a co-operative racing game. The participants' brains were activating in a similar way to how they would during face-to-face interaction, and «inter-brain neural synchronization has been linked with empathy and cooperation» in such situations.
There are necessary caveats to this: the study is relatively small-scale (it examined 42 pairs of players), and, while it does show activity that suggests a particular conclusion, it wouldn't be reasonable to extrapolate this as definitive proof. With that said, it was also published in Neuropsychologia, which is a peer-reviewed and respected journal in the brain field.
Participants were physically separated in soundproof rooms, and played a game «Inspired by an episode of the British television series Top Gear (Churchward and Doyle, 2008), in which participants were tasked to drive double-deckered cars, with the person on top turning the steering wheel and the person on bottom operating the pedals.» A simple videogame along these lines was created, and participants had to drive a car around a racing track as fast as possible, with one of them steering and one in charge of acceleration and brakes. The tracks featured obstacles to be avoided, and there were four circuits which all participants drove in both roles.
Take my word for it: this study contains some amazingly granular data about the length and timing of button presses.
The study notes that «Collaboration in the task was associated with higher synchrony in the
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