Neural Synchronization: How Bonding and Influence Work in the Brain

How do we connect with and influence others? By the amazing process of neural, or brain, synchronization. Keep reading to find out why!

The Meeting

You walk into a meeting room full of colleagues you are not too familiar with. They are already engaged in a heated discussion over future policies of the company.

In the beginning you struggle to get people’s opposing viewpoints but slowly you feel the room more and more. Soon enough, you find yourself in tune with some of the arguments, supporting them strongly and throwing new ideas as you go along.

Eventually you become the leading figure of the debate with some members on your side seemingly adding to your arguments as if they can finish your sentences almost telepathically! The discussion ends with a constructive and satisfactory compromise… but you feel strangely exhilarated.

It’s not only that you demonstrated leadership potential among your peers.

Most importantly, you felt deeply aligned with members of the group: with what they felt, what they intended to do, what they were about to say... and why.

You left the meeting confident about yourself and more optimistic about the future of the company.

Welcome to the fascinating world of brain synchronization!??

It Starts Early?

Parents’ and kids’ brains are connected dynamically with each other from a very early age.

A 2019 study, which used electroencephalograms on both mothers and their infants simultaneously (see photo below, credit to University of Cambridge), highlighted the importance of specific emotions in the mother’s brain and how these emotions pass on, and are integrated into, the baby’s brain.

This inter-brain network, as it’s called, is crucial for emotional synchronization which, as a social species, makes us:

• feel each other’s inner experience to “get them” better
• communicate more effectively
• learn from each other
• bond stronger in tighter social groups
• respond more effectively together to external threats and opportunities?

These advantages are not limited only to the parent-child relation. A 2017 study showed that couples demonstrated higher neural connectivity than strangers. This special brain connection in couples leads to more synchronized behavior. Strangers can also achieve neural and behavioral alignment, but it takes more time interacting for them to synchronize than with couples.

Synchronicity is a learning game!

This is Real Brain Influence

In his enlightening TED Talk titled “This is Your Brain on Communication” neuroscientist Uri Hasson describes two separate neural processes taking place in communication and storytelling.

The first one is, which we can call functional, is when speakers manage to engage with, and synchronize to, listeners’ sensory brain processes. When this happens, the speaker manages to communicate functionally to other people, making sure that the message has been received correctly.

Sensory, or functional, synchronization is the alignment of mainly logical and linguistic neural networks of higher cognitive brain areas. This is necessary for effective communication but it’s NOT enough! Your colleagues or clients can hear your message loud and clear, but this is not sufficient for them to act in unison!

Sensory synchronization needs to lead to emotional alignment in deeper neural networks for bonding and influence to work. Functional alignment is opening the door. To walk through it successfully though you need emotional neural alignment.

This means that attention is not the main story in modern business. You might get your target audience’s attention, which by itself is challenging in an informationally overloaded world, but it might lead nowhere or even opposite to what you were aiming for. You need to engage emotionally and in the right motivational direction to achieve real influence.

As I have posted in the past:

We live in the Emotions Economy.

NOT in the Attention Economy.

Brain Sync in What?

A 2020 systematic review of scientific literature in brain synchrony in natural-like social situations, meaning testing people’s brain simultaneously with neuro-tech to study neural alignment while they perform social tasks, showed a wide variety of implementation.

Brain-To-Brain hyperscanning studies, as they are called, have been already performed in diverse fields (as seen in the paper above and elsewhere):

• music production
• speech
• shared attention
• decision making
• classroom learning
• task collaboration
• creative thinking and problem solving
• therapist-patient relations
• leader-follower relations in businesses

When synchronization is positive, constructive and mutually beneficial, happy chemicals are produced in the brain creating a transcendent-like, collective flow experience. Dancing together, playing music and singing together, gaming together and even working together in this way, makes us happier and healthier.

Any human interaction in business, at school or in a bar, is subject to synchronicity. And the more synchronized people get the more bonded they become and the more effectively they behave as a team.

Empathy is Key

Brain synchronicity, or alignment, or contagion, is actually a form of empathy. Those participating in my seminars know that empathy is not one thing. It's at least three different phenomena with different neural mechanisms in our brains:

1. Cognitive Empathy is an analytical process of mentally understanding thoughts and feelings of others. It requires conscious effort to compare and contrast what you see with what you know.

2. Emotional Empathy is an affective process of mirroring or experiencing directly, and mainly unconsciously, the emotional states of others.

3. Behavioral Empathy is a motor-related process where you intervene with compassionate actions automatically, before thinking or feeling something specific. It is the urge to act and support.????

Brain synchronicity in the context of bonding and influence refers to the second type of empathy which my team and I have developed neuro-testing protocols to measure.?

So, empathy is not just Theory of Mind, which is about stepping into someone else’s shoes, taking their mental perspective of the world. Empathy is also an emotionally engaging process which gives us the evolutionary advantage of intuitively feeling each other, bonding together and acting in unison.

Our Synchronized Future

With more studies in neural synchronicity, and with attempts to implant neuro-tech straight into our brains (Elon Musk’s Neuralink), understanding communication, bonding and behavior as experienced in our brains while we interact with others is becoming more important than ever.

We are not far from a future where our emotional and mental performance (and wellbeing) will be measured real-time, all-the-time, to help us understand, connect and help each other like never before in human history.?Of course, there are serious ethical and legal issues to consider and resolve, including privacy, consent and data protection.

Until then though, we can already benefit greatly by the neuroscience of inter-brain emotional networking which can help us today boost our empathy, our collaboration and our ultimate connection with the world around us. Especially in such a troubled and unpredictable world we currently live in because of the pandemic and other global events.

Ready for your brain and mine to align?

Dr. Nikolaos Dimitriadis has studied more than 5,000 brains from 25 countries. He is the co-author of the books “Neuroscience for Leaders: Practical Insights to Successfully Lead People and Organizations (2nd edition)" and “Advanced Marketing Management: Principles, Skills and Tools” , both for Kogan Page London. Dr. Nikolaos Dimitriadis is heading the Neuro Consulting Services at Optimal HR Group, offering cutting edge neuro-research, neuro-training and neuro-advisory.