How brain activity differs as strangers bond
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Researchers at ETH Zurich, a science and technology university in Switzerland, studied how brain activity changed in 61 pairs of people, younger adults aged 18 to 35 and older adults aged 70 to 85, as they got to know each other over six weeks.
The participants engaged in drawing activities together, while researchers used wearable sensors to monitor their brain activity.
Scientists expected brain synchrony, similar patterns of activity between individuals, to increase as the pairs became more familiar, but found surprising results. Cross-generational pairs showed higher brain synchrony at the beginning of the study, but it decreased over time. In contrast, same-age pairs started with lower synchrony, which then increased. However, brain activity was more synchronized when pairs drew together compared to when they drew alone, indicating that collaboration still fostered some level of shared neural activity.
Ryssa Moffat, the lead researcher, believes the difference stems from how people predict each other’s behavior. Younger and older people initially had more difficulty finding common ground, requiring more effort to understand one another. Same-age pairs quickly established shared experiences, but then introduced more unpredictability into their interactions. Further analysis revealed that during encounters, intergenerational pairs often displayed a pattern of one person adapting to the other’s behavior, with the younger participant often taking on this role.
This research provides a new long-term look at how social relationships develop in the brain, particularly for older adults who are often excluded from this type of study.
