SPEAKER
Dr Laura Rai, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London. 

TITLE
Shared brain activity in large groups while watching live dance: A mobile-EEG Hyperscanning study.

ABSTRACT
Watching live dance, theatre, or music concerts is an inherently social activity in which people often share a highly emotional experience. Yet, neuroscientific research into music or dance cognition and appreciation has been almost exclusively conducted on individual people in a lab setting. Across three live performances of a dance choreography (‘Detective Work’) we measured real-time dynamics between the brains of large groups. We recorded 32-channel mobile EEG and respiratory activity from up to 23 audience members simultaneously (total N = 69) and assessed the spectators’ mood, personality, dance experience, and engagement with the performance. We compute Inter-brain connectivity analyses to measure brain and body synchrony between audience members relative to an active resting-state baseline. We predict that brain synchrony will (a) increase with overall audience engagement, (b) vary with the structural features of the choreography and (c) depend on individual differences between spectators, such as their dance experience. To our knowledge, this is the largest hyperscanning study of simultaneous wet-electrode EEGs to date. Our findings yield an important contribution towards understanding the neural mechanisms of sharing attention and affect in large groups of people.

ZOOM LINK
https://aarhusuniversity.zoom.us/j/68808716089