Neural Correlates of Cooperation during Interactive Visuomotor Task: An fNIRS Hyperscanning Study

Investigating neural correlates of cooperation is an important topic within the field of social cognition. The inter-brain synchronization in the leader-follower joint action paradigm and how neural synchrony is associated with the degree of cooperation remain unclear. Here, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning was employed to measure the neural activity of 14 dyads when they cooperated on a new interactive visuomotor task involving the leader-follower relationship. During this task, the participant who moved a handle of a haptic device along a specific path acted as the leader; meanwhile, the other participant produced a specified force with another haptic device acting as the follower. Using wavelet transform coherence analysis, we calculated the inter-brain coherence between the two participants based on their fNIRS signals from the prefrontal, left motor, and right temporoparietal brain regions. Correlation analysis between the neural coherence and the cooperation performance revealed that the increased synchrony in the right prefrontal and temporoparietal region was positively associated with the overall cooperation performance on the task. These findings suggested a vital role of the mentalizing network during the cooperative visuomotor task and the potential of inter-brain synchronization as a neural marker for assessing cooperation performance during haptic interactions.