Humans are social beings, and interaction with other humans is paramount to the well-being and development of humankind. Consider meetings at works, group work at universities, or family gatherings. All these situations require social interaction and collaboration which activates specific functions in the brain. However, quantitative studies of brain activity relating to these situations are still in an early stage. Studies have so far mainly been performed in controlled environments with simultaneous recordings from relatively few subject (less than 10).
The term hyperscanning is used to describe simultaneous recordings of brain activity from multiple subjects. The first hyperscanning recordings were performed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of two people. Since then, several studies have been carried out with both fMRI and electroencephalography (EEG).
One of the promising applications of hyperscanning is collaborative hearing aids, in which hearings aids from several subjects communicate with each other, to improve the relevance and quality of the sound presented to the user. In this context, hyperscanning could be used to determine the sound sources that users want to attend to. This information could be used to determine groups of subjects attending to the same source, and data from these hearings could be combined to improve the sound quality of relevant sound sources.
Hyperscanning also have lots of applications within research to analyze various scenarios relating to social interaction and collaboration. Consider for example attention and engagement of subjects during group work, a lecture, or even a concert with hundreds of participants. Such scenarios could be analyzed using hyperscanning and relevant quantitative measures could be extracted.
So far, most hyperscanning studies have been performed in controlled laboratory environments, either by placing the subject in a scanner (fMRI) or by mounting sensors on the scalp (EEG and fNIRS). In this project we aim to perform hyperscanning with an ear-centered device, where all sensors are placed in or around the ear.
We envision that an ear-centered device would enable large-scale hyperscanning of 50, 100 or more subjects participating in a common event, like a lecture or concert.
To obtain this, we will utilize the ear-EEG technology. Ear-EEG devices are compact, discreet, and easy to use, making it ideal for large-scale hyperscanning, where the subject must be able to insert and remove the device themselves.
The project consists of a hardware and a software part, with the hardware platform illustrated in Figure 1. The project is the first step in exploring how ear-EEG can be used to study social interaction and collaboration. We envision that ear-EEG can be a key to understand the importance and characteristics of interaction between humans.
The project is funded by the William Demant Foundation and T&W Engineering.
