A multibrain advantage for cooperative human behaviour

Abstract

Collaboration is a cornerstone of human behaviour, enabling individuals to achieve complex goals that transcend individual capabilities. While previous research has largely focused on the alignment of neural representations across brains during social interactions, real-world cooperation frequently involves complementary roles, where success depends on integrating distinct yet interdependent representations. Here, we combined electroencephalography (EEG) hyperscanning and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) methods to investigate neural representations in pairs of participants as they jointly performed a speeded two-dimensional visual matching task with asymmetric controls to encourage task division (i.e., attending to different stimulus features). Our results provide direct neural evidence of the emergence of selective information encoding within individual brains and complementary information encoding across brains during successful cooperation. Specifically, optimally divided task dimensions give rise to a late (> 485 ms) multibrain advantage, wherein the combined neural signals of the two participants carry more target-related information than that of either brain individually. Notably, the magnitude of these information-processing modulations within and across brains robustly predicted pairs collective task performance. These findings have broader implications for future research on collaboration, highlighting the need to move beyond representational alignment to harness diverse human as well as machine capabilities across our societies to unlock collective potential.