Measuring speaker-listener neural coupling with functional near infrared spectroscopy

The present study investigates brain-to-brain coupling, defined as inter-subject correlations in the hemodynamic response, during natural verbal communication. We used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to record brain activity of speakers telling stories and listeners comprehending audio recordings of these stories. Listeners’ brain activity was correlated with speakers’ with a delay. This between-brain correlation disappeared when verbal communication failed. We further compared the fNIRS and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) recordings of listeners comprehending the same story and found a relationship between the fNIRS oxygenated-hemoglobin concentration changes and the fMRI BOLD in brain areas associated with speech comprehension. This correlation between fNIRS and fMRI was only present when data from the same story were compared between the two modalities and vanished when data from different stories were compared; this cross-modality consistency further highlights the reliability of the spatiotemporal brain activation pattern as a measure of story comprehension. Our findings suggest that fNIRS is a powerful tool for investigating brain-to-brain coupling during verbal communication. As fNIRS sensors are relatively low-cost and can even be built into wireless, portable, battery-operated systems, these results highlight the potential of broad utilization of this approach in everyday settings for augmenting communication and interaction.