Abstract
We know very little about the neural mechanisms that support people’s ability to learn with others in real-world environments. To address this issue, in the past few years, researchers have begun to investigate the similarity in brain responses across learners, a phenomenon called “brain-to-brain synchrony.” In this talk, I will present two recent studies that explored how learning relates to brain-to-brain synchrony between students and teachers. The first study revealed that Alpha-band (8-12Hz) brain-to-brain synchrony predicted students’ performance in a delayed post-test. Further, moment-to-moment variation in alpha-band brain-to-brain synchrony indicated what specific information was retained by students. The second study, which is still ongoing, extend this line of work to collaborative learning in small groups of students. Taken together, these findings suggest that brain synchrony in classrooms is closely related to students’ learning outcomes.