You Can Use Music Or Football To Mind Meld

Maybe it won’t be a Jedi mind meld, but research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin shows that when you play music together with another person, the two of you experience synchronized brain waves. The study results point to brain synchronicity that cannot be explained away by similitudes in external stimulation but can be attributed to a more profound interpersonal coordination.

The researchers also believe that athletes engaged in team sports also experience brain wave coordination.

“When people coordinate their own actions, small networks between brain regions are formed. But we also observed similar network properties between the brains of the individual players, especially when mutual coordination is very important; for example at the joint onset of a piece of music,” says researcher Johanna Sänger.

In the study, the difference between the leader and the follower was also reflected in the results of the measurement of electrical activity captured by electrodes.

“In the player taking the lead, the internal synchronization of an individual’s brain waves was stronger and, importantly, was present already before the duet started to play,” says Sänger. “This could be a reflection of the leading player’s decision to begin playing at a certain moment in time,” she added.

The current data indicate that synchronization between individuals occurs in brain regions associated with social cognition and music production. And such interbrain networks are expected to occur not only while performing music. “We think that different people’s brain waves also synchronize when people mutually coordinate their actions in other ways, such as during sport, or when they communicate with one another,” Sänger says.