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Published June 26, 2020 | Supplemental Material + Submitted
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Team flow is a unique brain state associated with enhanced information integration and neural synchrony

Abstract

Team flow occurs when a group of people reaches high task engagement while sharing a common goal as in sports teams and music bands. While team flow is a superior enjoyable experience to individuals experiencing flow or regular socialization, the neural basis for such superiority is still unclear. Here, we addressed this question utilizing a music rhythm task and electroencephalogram hyper-scanning. Experimental manipulations held the motor task constant while disrupted the hedonic musical correspondence to blocking flow or occluded the partner's body and task feedback to block social interaction. The manipulations' effectiveness was confirmed using psychometric ratings and an objective measure for the depth of flow experience through the inhibition of the auditory-evoked potential to a task-irrelevant stimulus. Spectral power analysis revealed higher beta/gamma power specific to team flow at the left temporal cortex. Causal interaction analysis revealed that the left temporal cortex receives information from areas encoding individual flow or socialization. The left temporal cortex was also significantly involved in integrated information at both the intra- and inter-brains levels. Moreover, team flow resulted in enhanced global inter-brain integrated information and neural synchrony. Thus, our report presents neural evidence that team flow results in a distinct brain state and suggests a neurocognitive mechanism by which the brain creates this unique experience.

Additional Information

The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. We thank Dr. Chalres Yokoyama (University of Tokyo, Japan), Dr. Simone Shamay-Tsoory (University of Haifa, Israel), Dr. Katsumi Watanabe (Waseda University, Japan), and Dr. Makio Kashino (NTT communications, Japan) for their comprehensive comments on the manuscript. We thank Naomi Shroff-Mehta (Scripps College, CA), Salma Elnagar (University of Cambridge, UK), and Shota Yasunaga (Pitzer College, CA) for help with data collection and analysis. We thank Wenqi Yan (Monash University, Australia) for preliminary data analysis with integrated information. This work is supported by the program for promoting the enhancement of research universities funded to Toyohashi University of Technology to M.S. and S.N.; and the Japan Science and Technology (JST)-CREST Grant Number JPMJCR14E4 to S.S. M.C. is supported by the University of Hong Kong postgraduate scholarship program. C.T. is supported by the University of Hong Kong General Research Fund. N.T. is supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Projects (DP180104128 and DP180100396). A.L. is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. Author Contributions: M.S., M.C., and S.S. designed the experiments. M.S., M.C., and D.W. performed the experiments. M.S., M.C., S.S., A.L. and N.T. analyzed the data. M.S., S.S., M.C., N.T., D.W., S.N., and C.T. wrote the manuscript. Data Availability: All data and analysis codes used in the preparation of this article are available at https://osf.io/3b4hp. The authors have declared no competing interest.

Attached Files

Submitted - 2020.06.17.157990v1.full.pdf

Supplemental Material - media-1.pdf

Supplemental Material - media-2.mp4

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Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
December 13, 2023