Brains that Fire Together Wire Together: Interbrain Plasticity Underlies Learning in Social Interactions

/1 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1073858421996682?journalCode=nroa

Here I use the term interaction-based learning as a term that represents the acquisition of knowledge or skill through social interactions. /2

despite the centrality of social interactions to learning, most research in the field focuses on an isolated agent carrying out learning tasks devoid of social context, that only remotely resemble natural occurring learning /3

Social learning is an umbrella term representing all types of learning that include information transfer from one social protagonist to another. This includes observational learning, imitation, and modelling. Interaction-based learning is a specific form of social learning. /4

For example, in observational learning, the skill may be acquired without direct interaction with the teacher (learning to dance from YouTube). However, in interaction-based learning, the teacher must be engaged in teaching a specific learner. /5

Considering that interaction-based learning places the interaction between partners at the heart of the learning process, explanations of brain changes should not limit their scope to understanding one interaction partner but rather on changes in coupling between brains. /6

Why we learn better in Social Interaction? One possible explanation is the alignment developed between partners and the ability to achieve common understanding, e.g, align their representations containing information about space, time, causality, and intentionality. /7

Social alignment is the coordination of behaviour that occurs at multiple levels from movement synchrony, emotional alignment, to cognitive alignment. Importantly, the alignment may allow information or skill to be transferred in a more attuned or adjusted way to the learner /8

While studies on brain plasticity have focused on changes occurring in synapses brain structures & neuronal network, the authors' new approach seeks to look at interbrain plasticity. Interbrain coupling denotes correlation in activity between regions of 2 interacting brains. /9

the authors then provide a lot of evidence for this.
(interbrain plasticity is defined as the capacity of multiple brains to respond to experiences with short and long-lasting changes in the coupling between them that alter the behavioural repertoire of interaction partners)./10

the question remains if brain-to-brain networks are plastic and reorganize following learning, similarly to the reorganization observed in intrabrain networks. /11

authors postulate that 2 types of plasticity take place:Interbrain plasticity involves tendency of 1 brain region to be coupled with a region of an interaction partner, while in intrabrain plasticity,a region is coupled with another brain region in a network within this brain./12

The authors propose a high-level model which synthesizes evidence from the field of social learning, functional connectivity, hyperscanning, and research on consolidation to describe how we learn in social interactions. /13

The interbrain plasticity model could be tested with various methods involving interaction-based training. E.g it is possible to have a teacher train a learner with a movement sequence and examine how interbrain coupling between the teacher & learner change following training./14

To evaluate the changes in coupling it is possible to apply graph theory tools that allow probing network reconfiguration and characterizing topological changes of interbrain networks following training. /15

Developing new paradigms that assess interbrain plasticity may expand our understanding of learning in social interactions. This approach may provide a much-needed new dimension of learning to explain how information is acquired in real-life social interactions. /16

@geoffmulgan @cesifoti

I'd like to see this ^ alongside Agre's ideas on how cognition happens outside the brain https://twitter.com/irinimalliaraki/status/1337033789483126786