Dear List,

An simple and important paper, just published in _Trends in Cognitive Science_,
that focuses on the brain-coupling mechanisms at work at the deepest level in
the formation of culture.

Full paper here (from a Princeton U. server):

<http://psych.princeton.edu/psychology/research/hasson/pubs/Hasson_et_al_TiCS_20\
12.pdf>

Abstract only below.

The article underlines views that I've argued for since the late 90s in papers
with a number of collaborators. This article does not discuss the underlying
correlative topology of brains behind this coupling, which has been detailed
elsewhere.

I'll be discussing some of the issues in relation to the global emergence of
premodern religious and philosophical systems in stratified manuscript
traditions in a lecture at Columbia University on September 25th -- in a broader
series of lectures on religion and writing organized by Mahnaz Moazami and
Dagmar Riedel (on our list).

For the full series of lectures (Columbia University Seminar on Religion and
Writing), see:

<https://researchblogs.cul.columbia.edu/islamicbooks/religionwriting/>

Steve

*******
Abstract only of the new paper below, which underlines the shift in
neurobiological thinking from studying single brains to brains linked in broader
communication networks. Henderson, Witzel, and I first pointed to the importance
of making such a shift in a paper in 2002.

Brain-to-brain coupling: a mechanism for creating and sharing a social world

Uri Hasson1,2, Asif A. Ghazanfar1,2, Bruno Galantucci3,4, Simon Garrod5,6 and
Christian Keysers7,8

1 Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
2 Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
3 Department of Psychology, Yeshiva University, New York, NY 10033, USA
4 Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
5 Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12
8QB, UK
6 Department of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009,
Australia
7 Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN-KNAW), 1105 BA Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
8 Department of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Groningen, University of
Groningen, 9700 RB Groningen, The Netherlands

Cognition materializes in an interpersonal space. The emergence of complex
behaviors requires the coordintion of actions among individuals according to a
shared set of rules. Despite the central role of other individuals in shaping
one’s mind, most cognitive studies focus on processes that occur within a single
individual. We call for a shift from a single-brain to a multi-brain frame of
reference. We argue that in many cases the neural pro- cesses in one brain are
coupled to the neural processes in another brain via the transmission of a
signal through the environment. Brain-to-brain coupling constrains and shapes
the actions of each individual in a social network, leading to complex joint
behaviors that could not have emerged in isolation.






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