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Medicine

Neuroscientists Claim To Have Pinpointed the Brain States Unique To 'Team Flow' (sciencealert.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the what's-going-on-behind-the-scenes dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: At some point in life, you have probably enjoyed a 'flow' state -- when you're so intensely focused on a task or activity, you experience a strong sense of control, a reduced awareness of your environment and yourself, and a minimized sense of the passing of time. It's also possible to experience 'team flow,' such as when playing music together, competing in a sports team, or perhaps gaming. In such a state, we seem to have an intuitive understanding with others as we jointly complete the task at hand. An international team of neuroscientists now thinks they have uncovered the neural states unique to team flow, and it appears that these differ both from the flow states we experience as individuals, and from the neural states typically associated with social interaction.

Researchers found increased beta and gamma brain wave activity in the left middle temporal cortex. This region of the brain is typically associated with information integration and key functions like attention, memory, and awareness, which are "consistent with higher team interactions and enhancing many flow dimensions," the team writes. However, what was unique about team flow, was that participants' neural activity appeared to synchronize. When participants were performing the task as a unit, their brains would mutually align in their neural oscillations (beta and gamma activity), creating a "hyper-cognitive state between the team members." If brains can be functionally connected through inter-brain synchrony, does this mean it is not only our brain that contributes to our consciousness? It's a curious question, but the authors warn it is much too soon to tell. "Based on our findings, we cannot conclude that the high value of integrated information correlates with a modified form of consciousness, for instance, 'team consciousness'," they write. "Its consistency with neural synchrony raises intriguing and empirical questions related to inter-brain synchrony and information integration and altered state of consciousness." The study was published in the journal eNeuro.
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Neuroscientists Claim To Have Pinpointed the Brain States Unique To 'Team Flow' More

Neuroscientists Claim To Have Pinpointed the Brain States Unique To 'Team Flow'

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  • Great now they can "make" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @08:11AM (#61883569)
    everyone a team player! I wonder if their definition of team is the same as mine?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lazarus ( 2879 )

      You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

    • It's like those USB brain wave monitors.

      It's true that you can use them to monitor when you reach a certain mental state, and even to achieve that mental state. However, you're sitting their meditating. If you sit there and meditate without the monitor, it works just as well.

      This doesn't help to make anybody a "team player," so it doesn't matter what your definition is. What it may do is help with monitoring people who are being given psychotropic drugs, as an objective measurement of efficacy.

  • This is ADHD in a nutshell (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @08:17AM (#61883595) Journal
    "At some point in life, you have probably enjoyed a 'flow' state -- when you're so intensely focused on a task or activity, you experience a strong sense of control, a reduced awareness of your environment and yourself, and a minimized sense of the passing of time."

    Those of us with ADHD spend most of our lives in this space right here. People think we can't focus but they are wrong, we are in this hyperfocused 'flow' state at almost all times and the tunnel vision is what makes it difficult to focus on you.

    "[this differs] from the neural states typically associated with social interaction."

    Tell me about it.
    • We also spend time here when we do have more social interaction: "It's also possible to experience 'team flow,' such as when playing music together, competing in a sports team, or perhaps gaming. In such a state, we seem to have an intuitive understanding with others as we jointly complete the task at hand."

      Perhaps this synchrony is why we often so strongly mirror or 'borrow' social mannerisms of others.

      • Borrowing social mannerisms? Sounds like the beginnings of an actor.

        • Ever spend an hour conversing with someone with a unique speech pattern or accent and found yourself speaking with that accent? It is the same thing but on more levels. Given enough time I'll find myself responding in a similar way to things, telling similar jokes, having similar reactions and kneejerk ideas, etc.

          It begins to fade without that person around but I have caught myself mirroring fictional characters from books. It is actually one of the reasons I enjoy huge epic series with many well developed

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 )

      ADHD? Mate, that's just normal high sensitivity.
      I know in the USA, everybody who doesn't run for the hills before they count to three in diagnosed with ADHD because it allows legally selling hard drugs to children who are "conspicuous", for a nice big fat amount of profit, but no, that alone does not mean you've go ADHD.

    • Nailed it. This is also why I now know a little more about the etymology of the "in a nutshell" idiom, and Pliny the Elder.

    • Those of us with ADHD spend most of our lives in this space right here. People think we can't focus but they are wrong, we are in this hyperfocused 'flow' state at almost all times and the tunnel vision is what makes it difficult to focus on you.

      Speak for yourself please. I have the "primarily inattentive" type of ADHD, and I can get 'squirreled' in a heartbeat. I'm very familiar with the state you're talking about - I get so absorbed that I can drop tools on the floor and not notice until I need them again. So focused that someone in the same room trying to talk to me has trouble breaking through. But I also spend lots of time wasting lots of energy with thoughts and realizations darting around so thick and fast that they are largely useless to me

      • I'm saying the key which underlies our pattern might relate to this very specific part of the brain not that every moment subjectively feels the same way.

        "I can get 'squirreled' in a heartbeat. I'm very familiar with the state you're talking about - I get so absorbed that"

        I know what you mean here but I think with each squirrel hop we are either in a new tunnel or a state of confusion as our brain keeps fighting for something to hyperfocus on. A sort of search mode if you will.

        "I also spend lots of time was
  • I sure don't see why phase-locking individuals would have any connection to coordinating far higher-level behaviors like cooperation. Rough analogy, does being on phase-synchronized AC power enable a pair of computers to network? Not at all, it's irrelevant.

    • Better question is how does this "locking" happen without a direct connection? Is there a "team" pheromone?

      • Whether it's a pheromone or electromagnetic field, if this research is true then it follows that telework is doomed to poor team coordination because brain phase information cannot possibly be transmitted through Zoom.

        • If it is a pheromone, I agree that will be unlikely. But if it is an EM field? Well, maybe we can build hardware to transmit that, the same we do for sound or light. But, who knows, with the right bio 3D printer, maybe pheromones could be transmitted. The human race has only just recently started on our telepresence tech -- barely a generation old. Ask again in 100 years.

      • Wireless?
        https://www.earth.com/news/bra... [earth.com]

        While I can't trace down the original journal article because I'm lazy, apparently even severed parts of the brain can communicate with each other to some degree through some as-yet unknown mechanism.

      • Re:Color you skeptical (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Ostracus inquired:

        Better question is how does this "locking" happen without a direct connection? Is there a "team" pheromone?

        As a musician with many years' experience playing in bands, I speculate, in that specific context, it may have to do with the rhythm of the music we're playing acting as a synchronizing agent - or perhaps as a "catalyst." I've certainly felt that sense of being in a state of effortless connection to the other players - and its opposite, as well (which is a whole lot less rewarding, I assure you).

        Something similar may happen with sports teams (I wouldn't personally know, since playing sport

        • Yup, I'm sure it's based on cues and not some mystical low level connection.

          • I agree. The most "sync'd", "in tune", and "flow state" I've ever been was in an infantry platoon responding to events. We just knew what everyone was going to do and what we needed to do so that we just moved as a team and didn't have to think about it. It doesn't mean you are mindless; we did have a platoon commander directing. Next was as an individual breaking 100 in a snooker game. :) Lost all sense of time till only the blue, pink, and black were left.

      • Better question is how does this "locking" happen without a direct connection? Is there a "team" pheromone?

        There are a lot of ways that people communicate without realizing it. Research has shown that babies are affected by the heartbeat of their mother, and her breathing, among other things. Differences like the size of the pupil can be noticed subconsciously. And of course, facial expressions and tone of voice are intuited without analytical thought. Another one is that women who live together tend to have their periods synchronize, although it's not clear by what mechanism.

        Finally I think I can "smell" when p

      • There doesn't have to be anything mysterious about it. Your eyes and ears are taking in information at a prodigious rate and while you're not consciously aware of most of it, the part of your brain that evolved to enable teamwork will do its thing. Mirror neurons, anyone?

    • I am also sceptical, but somewhat intrigued. I do not think your analogy is very apt. Better is why the human computers seem to independently end up running the same programs. A kind of telepathy or shared consciousness is not the only explanation, but it is one worth exploring.

      • It could be something as simple as the same OS is loaded on all the hardware and, given the same physical stimulus, all the same programs start running. If you've all trained under the same mentor or even the same school of thought, then the applications in the brain just need a single "go" signal to be in sync. It would be more akin to a 2-factor ID code generated on two different devices from the same timestamp. No need for information transfer for them to come up with the same number multiple times in a

    • I sure don't see why phase-locking individuals would have any connection to coordinating far higher-level behaviors like cooperation. Rough analogy, does being on phase-synchronized AC power enable a pair of computers to network? Not at all, it's irrelevant.

      From the summary:

      "Based on our findings, we cannot conclude that the high value of integrated information correlates with a modified form of consciousness, for instance, 'team consciousness'," they write. "Its consistency with neural synchrony raises intriguing and empirical questions related to inter-brain synchrony and information integration and altered state of consciousness."

      The conclusion is that it is not phase-locking between individuals, but closer to phase-locking between your own internal information integration and your inputs.

    • Their analysis is based on a field of math called Integrated Information Theory. It's pretty technical, but here's the idea in a nutshell. "Information" has a precise mathematical definition. Given a dataset (EEG readings from all the members of a team) or a subset (readings from just one member), you can quantify how much information it contains. "Integrated information" is the information only contained in the whole dataset, not the subsets. Take the amount of information in the full dataset, subtrac

  • I recognize this (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tx ( 96709 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @09:09AM (#61883737) Journal

    ...when you're so intensely focused on a task or activity, you experience a strong sense of control, a reduced awareness of your environment and yourself, and a minimized sense of the passing of time.

    Yes, I have played Civilization III.

    • What does any of that have to do with "team" though?
      I had that feeling more often when I was alone than when I was with somebody else.

      • Most flow experiences don't involve teams. Usually, flow is an individual experience.

        One can experience flow doing a lot of different things. A painter painting can experience flow. A person playing Civilization or Doom can experience flow. A developer can experience flow. An athlete can experience flow.

        When one experiences flow, one is generally working at a level of difficulty where one is stretching one's ability but not overreaching them. If you have ever been doing a task and it seemed like every

  • ... that it's different in everyone, and their "pinpoint" only matches the median of all people they've tested. In terms of physical coordinates as well an neuro-structural location.

    Also, their definition of "team flow" in sufficiently vague, to justify their "discovery" as "correct" in almost any case.

      You know... When the purpose of your paper is to generate papers and citations instead of useful insights...

    • ... that it's different in everyone ...

      There is obviously an emotional synchronicity among humans. The answer I want is, do Asperger's/autistic people experience team flow? Since such people don't sympathize, have low EQ, I think not.

  • The same patterns of brain activity are probably also present when changing a tyre in the rain & when listening to Shakira backwards. XKCD cartoon: https://xkcd.com/1453/ [xkcd.com] This is my favourite fMRI study: https://blogs.scientificameric... [scientificamerican.com] In terms of informing us of how to go about achieving "flow" in teams in the workplace, this may be interesting science at the neurological level but it's several levels removed from behavioural analysis. We'd be better off reading cognitive behavioural science to infor

  • Kinda disappointed that they didn't bother to cite UCLA researcher Ron Stevens who did this 20 years ago and has maintained an active lab doing so for the last 20 years...

    https://scholar.google.com/cit... [google.com]

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