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EEG indexes the sums of electrical postsynaptic responses of large neuronal populations1 produced during information processing.2 Among these responses, certain patterns are time-locked to sensory, motor or cognitive events. These "event-related" patterns of the EEG are called ERPs.3 An ERP consists of several deflections (e.g. the N300, N400 & P600). Each of these deflections is characterized by its latency relative to the onset of the event, its voltage or amplitude, its positive or negative electrical polarity and its scalp distribution, all of which provide clues about the underlying neural computations3.
ERP studies allow us to obtain information about the basic neural processes underlying higher-order, complex cognitive operations4. The ERP method is primarily used in psychological and neuropsychiatric studies. Some of the advantages associated with ERPs over other neuroimaging modalities, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and near- infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), include its excellent temporal resolution, which gives researchers the ability to follow the computing activity of the brain down to the millisecond, and its relative cost-effectiveness. This is crucial when testing two participants simultaneously as is the case in our study5,6.
For this experiment, we are mostly interested in the late posterior positivity (LPP), which is an ERP having a late latency (i.e. from 250 to 1000ms post stimulus onset). It is elicited by the presentation of meaningful stimuli, such as words, objects, faces, and scenes. The well-known P3b components belong to the LPP family, which peak around 600 ms post stimulus onset for words and at about 750 ms for face- and scene-stimuli. The greater the amount of new information placed in working memory, and thus in consciousness, and the more vivid, salient and certain this information is, the larger the amplitude of this potential will be7,8 When a stimulus-or any aspect of it, such as its exact time of occurrence-is unexpected, it elicits a larger LPP than when the stimulus and each of its aspects are fully predicted. A very large number of cognitive factors can thus have an impact on the amplitude of the LPP8,9.
Recording the EEG of two participants simultaneously as they are exposed to visual stimuli can help us evaluate whether or not the brain activity of one subject might influence the other's brain electrodynamics when neither sees what his/her partner is being shown.
Given that ERP voltages, scalp distributions and latencies all provide clues as to what neural computations are occurring, they can be measured to test any external impact on the brain and detect differences in the processing of visual stimuli in pairs of closely related individuals. To test the existence of such an impact , we focused on one operational hypothesis: the LPP elicited by a visual stimulus in one person could be affected by the stimulus displayed to his/her partner. This hypothesis is thus based on the idea that if stimulus processing of one person has an impact on the neural activities of another person, this new information arising from the brain of the former might modulate the amplitude of the LPP in the latter.
A more precise hypothesis was built from a complementary idea. The impact of the processing of the stimulus on the brain activity of a close other should be prevented when the stimulus is known to be different from the one seen by the close other. In effect, in that situation, this impact constitutes an irrelevant interference. To create that knowledge, the two participants of each pair were told that they would be presented with different stimuli. Nevertheless, only half of the trials of the experiment were consistent with this instruction. They thus constitute the different-stimulus condition, the DCS. The other half of the trials were inconsistent with this instruction. There, the stimuli simultaneously presented to the two subjects of each pair were the same and thus made up the identical-stimulus condition, the ISC. This latter condition was used in order to have a control condition in which the inhibition should not develop, as it would pertain to information corresponding to the stimulus actually presented to the close other. Our prediction was that, in the absence of such an inhibition, more information should enter the content of working memory, which could be responsible larger LPPs in the ISC than in the DSC. Moreover, finding such ERPs differences would confirm the possibility of an effect of stimulus processing on the ERPs of a close other given that subjects cannot see the actual stimulus their partners is presented with.
These predictions were confirmed in two previous experiments, which also showed that the two participants of each pair had to be socially close and not strangers.10,11 Nevertheless, in these experiments, the two participants of these pairs were not acoustically and visually separated. Despite the extreme unlikeliness that the ERP effects observed could be due to classical visual and/or acoustic communications between partners and given the importance the results would have for social cognition, we decided to introduce a glass- and a curtain-separation between partners to verify that the ERP differences persist.
However, we were aware that by doing this, the participants might no longer feel together during the experiment and that this could have an effect. Therefore, we felt important to remind the participants to try to feel the presence of their partner during the entire experiment, and at the debriefing session we asked them if they managed to do so.
Additionally, in the first two experiments assessing the effects of stimulus processing on the ERP of close others 10,11, the DSC and the ISC were corresponding to different blocks of trials, To prevent fatigue, strategy bias and other confounds, the experimental conditions for this experiment now correspond to trials randomized within blocks.
In this new experiment, the two participants (A and B) are each seated in front of their own computer screen in two adjacent rooms. The wall that separates them contains an 86-by-178-cm glass window that is covered on both sides by a curtain. Thus, the participants are seated side-by-side but can neither see nor hear each other during the actual experiment. However, right before the experiment, when they are being fitted with the EEG caps, the curtains are open and the participants can see each other and maintain a feeling of closeness. Once they are fitted with an EEG cap to record their brain activity and the EEG signals are checked for quality, the curtains are closed. However, most importantly, participants are instructed to try to continue feeling the presence of their partner during the entire experiment. The on-screen directives instruct each participant to try and memorize the images that will be flashing simultaneously, each on their respective screens, and to avoid excessive blinking and facial movements.
Their belief in the nature of the two images is experimentally controlled via the on-screen directives that clearly inform them that they will always be exposed to different visual stimuli than what will be presented to their partner. However, as mentioned, each participant sees 200 images, 100 of which are actually different from the ones presented to their partner and form the consistent condition or DSC (i.e., the different-stimulus condition) and 100 of which are actually the same as the ones presented to their partner. They constitute the inconsistent condition or ISC (i.e., the identical stimulus condition). Thus, during an inconsistent ISC trial, both participants are simultaneously presented with an identical image. During a consistent DSC trial, both participants are simultaneously presented with a different image. The order of these trials is randomized.
We systematically explored the ERPs in time windows earlier than that of the LPPs to detect indexes of the inhibition that the different-stimuli-instruction should trigger when the stimuli of the trial actually differ. We found that between 75-150ms post image onset, the absolute value of the subtraction of the mean voltages of the ERPs of the DSC trials from those of the ISC-trails were greater in participants who felt together during the experiment than in those who did not. This was observed at right frontal electrode sites, especially at F8, and thus over the ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex. Based on our previous works on inhibition and negative ERP-components16,17,18, we selected, among the participants who felt together, those in whom ERPs to DSC-trials were more negative than those to ISC-trials and thus those in whom the inhibition might have occurred. As expected, these particular participants had significantly smaller LPPs for the consistent DSC-trials than for the inconsistent ISC-trials (see Figure 4). These results suggest that a greater amount of information entered the content of working memory in ICS trials, with this information potentially becoming more salient and/or vivid, and/or being integrated with more confidence. Moreover, they prove the existence of an effect of stimulus processing on ERPs of close others given the impossibility for participants to see the image actually presented to their partners and the impossibility to communicate.