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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2025.1469105
Inter-brain synchrony in real-world and virtual reality search tasks using EEG Hyperscanning
Provisionally accepted- 1University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
- 2Auckland Bioengineering Institute, Faculty of Engineering, University of Auckland, Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
- 3Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India
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This paper describes a study that explores brain synchronization in a collaborative search task in Virtual Reality (VR), and compares it to brain synchronization in the same task conducted in the real world. Previous studies have explored the neural correlates of real-world collaborative visual search tasks using EEG hyperscanning, and have demonstrated the occurrence of neural synchronisation in these tasks. However, there are only a small number of experiments conducted in VR. In our study, we find that brain synchronization occurs in a visual search task carried out in VR in a manner similar to the real world, and that higher levels of inter-brain synchrony relate to stronger performance on the task. These results suggest that VR is suitable for brain synchronization studies, and that there is an opportunity for more team-based neuroscience research using VR.
Keywords: hyperscanning, brain synchronization, virtual reality, remote collaboration, social neuroscience, social facilitation, EEG, joint attention
Received: 23 Jul 2024; Accepted: 10 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hayati, Barde, Gumilar, Momin, Lee, Chatburn and Billinghurst. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ashkan Hayati, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
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