Revisiting the earliest hyperscanning study: power and functional connectivity in the alpha band may link brains far apart

" This brief report revisits the earliest known hyperscanning study published in 1965, which examined simultaneous EEG recordings of identical twins separated by six meters. The original study’s findings suggested that eye closure in one twin elicited alpha activity in the other, despite physical separation. Leveraging contemporary signal processing techniques, we reanalyzed the digitized data to validate their findings. Spectral analysis confirmed alpha activity in the twins’ EEG signals, aligning with the original observations. Multitapering along with background noise subtraction also revealed the alpha activity in the unrelated subject, which could not be observed by visual inspection alone. Coherence analysis revealed significant alpha band synchrony between a twin and an unrelated subject, differing from the initial study’s conclusions. Our findings indicate that even historical data can yield new insights when revisited with contemporary data analysis tools and highlight the potential for future large-scale studies using advanced techniques to explore nonlocal brain interactions." {Credits 1}

All interactions in the study occurred at a distance (six meters), and there was no sensory communication between participants in any condition. Both twins and unrelated individuals were tested under the same conditions, with no physical or sensory connection.

• The presence of significant synchrony between unrelated individuals challenges the idea that such connections are exclusive to twins.


• This broadens the scope of "non-local" brain interactions, suggesting that such effects might not be limited to genetically identical individuals but could occur more generally under specific conditions.

{Credits 1} 🎪 Özkurt TE (2024) Revisiting the earliest hyperscanning study: power and functional connectivity in the alpha band may link brains far apart. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 18:1476944. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1476944. © 2024 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.