From Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Learning from Reward

will present the talk titled

Do you lead or Do you follow? Neurophysiological correlates of leaders and followers in a purely cooperative decision-making task

Abstract

Conformity is a fundamental cooperative behaviour which helps people to adjust their mental frameworks to reach a common goal. However, while conformity has been extensively studied in social psychology, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying this behaviour. To study this, we registered the EEG activity of 36 participants in a new cooperative decision-making paradigm in which dyads of subjects had to make a perceptual estimation in three consecutive trials and converge in their decisions without an explicit request or reward to do so. Event-related Potentials revealed an increase in the P200, P3a and P3b in those trials showing a higher discrepancy between the decision of the two participants compared to those showing a greater convergence. In addition, participants leading the trials had a higher P3b than the followers. Finally, time-frequency activity showed higher theta and alpha activation in trials with larger discrepancy. Our results suggest differences in signal related to perception, attention and engagement depending on whether a participant is actively engaging in following and adjusting their behaviour towards their partners.

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