A new study reveals that the brain does not process Zoom and face-to-face conversations in the same way.
The results of the study, conducted at Yale University, highlight how important interpersonal communication is to how we naturally interact with others.
“The human brain’s social systems are more active during real live in-person encounters than during Zoom conversations,” says neuroscientist Joy Hirsch, lead author of the published study. “Representing faces online, at least with current technology, does not have the same ‘privileged access’ to Social neural circuits in the brain.
The researchers explained that most previous studies that used neuroimaging to record brain activity during social interactions included individuals, not couples.
In the recent study, researchers compared how two people interacted with each other in real time. The participants (28 people) enjoyed good health, and they included different ages, genders, and ethnicities.
Hirsch and her team used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), electroencephalography (EEG), and eye trackers to carefully record brain and eye activity when people talked to each other.
They compared the results of couples participating in live, face-to-face conversations with the results of Zoom users who conduct video chats on the popular platform.
Compared to Zoom interactions, face-to-face discussions coincided with greater increases in brain signals in a critical area called the dorsal parietal area.
Specifically, when people talked to each other face-to-face, their brain wave activity showed theta oscillations, which are associated with better facial processing. Activity in brain regions associated with sensory processing and spatial perception also indicated more noticeable contrast in realistic faces, and eye tracking showed longer durations of eye contact.
Brain scans of people who had face-to-face conversations revealed higher levels of synchronized neural activity, which the researchers interpret as a sign of increased social signal exchange.
The team says social interaction is important, and we humans are social creatures at heart, with our brains adapted to process the dynamic facial cues we encounter in everyday interactions with others.
The study was published in the journal Imaging Neuroscience.
Virgin Galactic successfully completes its commercial suborbital flight
Virgin Galactic announced that its spacecraft has successfully completed its fifth commercial suborbital flight.
The company indicated that the vehicle was launched on Thursday, November 2, from an airport in New Mexico, at exactly 11:00 East Coast time in the United States (18:00 Moscow time), and reached an altitude of 85 km, as its passengers were in zero gravity for several minutes. Then it returned to Earth and landed at an airport in New Mexico.
The spacecraft's crew included: Michael Mastucci, who assumed the command mission, pilot Kelly Latimer, astronaut trainer Colin Bennett from Virgin Galactic, and an unnamed French-Italian citizen, in addition to American scientists Saul Allan Stern and Kelly Girardi.
It should be noted that Virgin Galactic had launched the first commercial suborbital flight with tourists on board its vehicles at the end of last June, and this flight was scheduled to take place in 2022, but due to problems related to the shortage of labor and the crisis in supplying the required equipment, the flight was postponed until the first quarter. From 2023.