Team Members Show Decreased Inter-brain Coupling When Resolving Uncertainty

Abstract

Team members regulate their activities and move together at the collective level of behavior while coordinating their actions toward shared goals. In parallel with team processes, team members need to resolve uncertainties arising from their changing task work and a shifting environment. We explored the neurodynamic tension between resolving individual uncertainty and participating in collaborative processes during high fidelity team training.

Electroencephalography (EEG) was collected from five two-person medical flight teams and following pre-processing to remove non-brain signals, the inter-brain coherence (IBC) were estimated by wavelet coherence and compared with the neurodynamic information (NI) of each individual, a measure that maps closely with human uncertainty.

Analysis of the second-by-second IBC and NI showed that the expressions of NI and IBC were not simultaneous and may be mutually exclusive, suggesting that the factors elevating and resolving NI levels are single person processes and that it may be difficult for team members to maintain IBC while reducing their uncertainties. Although preliminary, these studies provide a first step towards neurodynamically quantifying and modifying teamwork and task work processes.