[HN Gopher] Inter-brain sync occurs without physical copresence ... ___________________________________________________________________ Inter-brain sync occurs without physical copresence during online gaming Author : programd Score : 100 points Date : 2022-08-31 14:43 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com) | im3w1l wrote: | I wonder what it means that the brain wave synchronization | decreased over the session. Did some signal cause them to start | out synchronized and then they gradually drifted apart | spontaneously? Also kind of wonder if this will replicate. | tantalor wrote: | Parallel Synchronized Randomness | | https://youtu.be/KlpGe7RN9zk | dwringer wrote: | I am also reminded of the series _Maniac_ on Netflix, which I | highly recommend. | meremortals wrote: | edit: maybe not "without physical copresence" | | I believe something similar happens when musicians improvise/jam, | especially Jazz: | | https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... | jamal-kumar wrote: | Yeah I was about to mention this, or really any other highly | synchronized activity with a degree of improvisation involved. | Very cool feeling doing this kind of thing. | | I think the point of studies like this using a video game, | though, is that it's a lot more reproducible. | hammock wrote: | Without physical copresence? | vorpalhex wrote: | There's no reason that isn't testable.. | hammock wrote: | Brain sync is known in physically present people, and as I | believe is understood to be in large part mediated by the vagus | nerve in your gut. | | Interesting to see this finding in remote setting | amelius wrote: | I would be more surprised if it occurred without means of | communication. Now it is just high level cognitive interaction | shows low level correlation, which is not very interesting. | fnordpiglet wrote: | I know I always ovulated with my fleet mates in Eve | mym1990 wrote: | Me while playing League of Legends as my 4 teammates completely | rip me to shreds for underperforming: "Yep, they are all on the | same page, that's for sure". | andrepd wrote: | I equate League of Legends with drugs or junk food. It's not | fun, not rewarding, not creative, not anything. I could play 3 | or 4 40m games and at the end have a completely empty feeling. | It is, however, extremely addictive. | | I'll try hard not to get addicted to something that meaningless | ever again. Games like LoL are the soul-sucking rock-bottom of | games. | | My experience, of course. | mym1990 wrote: | I have played League for 10 hours straight before and thought | "wtf just happened?". Its like time just evaporates and it | really does feel like an addiction. | standardly wrote: | "It's not fun" | | What did you expect to get out of a game? If it isn't fun, | don't play! That's why it felt meaningless lol | adamrezich wrote: | maybe it's just me but I've noticed a general steady decline in | Dota 2 Turbo mode "toxicity" over the years. | mym1990 wrote: | Tons of initiatives going on in MOBAs to work on the toxicity | problems, I hope they are working! | adamrezich wrote: | I usually end every turbo game with "ggwp, have a great | evening everyone", and commend all of the other nine | players unless someone was being an asshole (regardless of | whether we won or lost, or whether that player performed | well). I can't remember a time when Dota 2 was ever | friendlier than it is now (been playing for over a decade | now, since beta)... at least, in Turbo. I'm sure the other | "full" modes still have quite a bit of nastiness as the | games run longer there than in Turbo. | | the whole reason I play the game is what TFA is talking | about, syncing up and pulling off cool shit with four other | random people against five other random people online. when | it works it's incredible. | mym1990 wrote: | Really good mindset! | cevn wrote: | I just play ARAM now, it's less toxic than ranked. | amatecha wrote: | The problem with ARAM is people play terribly and if you're | actually trying to play well, it's pretty frustrating. People | mess around and then are like "it's just ARAM bro" when | you're like "yo wtf plz actually play properly". | | In general, League is a frustrating experience because it's | basically inevitable that even when you're playing your | absolute best, others on the team aren't. The occasional | great experiences where everyone has that synergistic | gameplay and excellent coordination/execution makes it all | worth it (I guess), but every other match has me wondering | "why am I still playing this?" heh | [deleted] | cevn wrote: | I devote most of my competitive energy to Rocket League for | this reason. Games are only 5 minutes long and you can | actually solo carry. Also you don't have to re learn the | game every 3 months when a balance patch hits. | | edit: I know what you mean. A great League game makes it | all worth it, but those seem to be maybe 10% of the games | and the other 90% you are just trying to be a kindergarten | teacher trying to keep everyone from going afk. | frostwarrior wrote: | My entire experience with MOBAs is that people will rip you to | shreds for not doing or knowing every overly specific thing | people didn't know either when they had less experience. | mym1990 wrote: | Or don't even know currently but just want point fingers. | Something about humans becoming anonymous really bring out a | different side of us... | moonchrome wrote: | Not really about being anonymous as I've seen the same | pattern when playing with people I know in real life, | although playing with strangers removes a lot of restraint. | | It's more that those games create a scenario where you are | going to be frustrated for 20+ minutes because of mistakes | of others, and you likely started playing because you're | trying to get away from frustration IRL. | dwringer wrote: | Unfortunately I can agree with this completely. I stopped | playing Fortnite because of this. Although it can be fun | without winning, when they introduced the victory crowns | to reward multiple consecutive wins (along with an emote | to rub it in everyone's face) it seemed like just enough | to cause us all to start getting frustrated and screw up | team morale. | wincy wrote: | Ugh I stopped playing league of legends because it just made me | so angry and act so terribly. Screaming at my friends and just | constantly feeling angry and frustrated. With the way the | ranking system works this is basically guaranteed that you'll | lose half your games unless you're a literally world class | player. | | My wife's ex would piss in bottles while drinking vodka and | playing. If I try to play League she'll throw the breaker | because the noises are triggering to her. | | Now I play D&D because losing is just as much fun (or more | fun!) than losing. | [deleted] | Fatnino wrote: | Play D&D because losing is just as much fun as losing? | wincy wrote: | Hah just as much fun as winning. Losing at D&D can involve | all sorts of weird and creative things happening depending | on your Dungeon Master. Often times you might not just die | in a conflict. | | Recently my character found a cursed necklace that guards | against all but the strongest attacks and my bard is very | excited and wearing it, feeling invincible. Little does he | know, there's a very powerful evil being who can hear all | his thoughts, knows where he is at all times, and can | compel him to do his bidding. | | I'm pretty excited to see how the story develops, even if | it eventually ends in my character's horrible demise. | mym1990 wrote: | When losing is all you know _sob_ | MengerSponge wrote: | They played League for so long the word "Win" and its | relatives "Winning" and "Victory" left their vocabulary. | I'm surprised "fun" is still there! | znpy wrote: | If that's your experience with league of legends (and don't | get me wrong, i _feel_ you) then don't even think about even | trying OpenArena and similar. The amount of cheaters | /aimbotters is astonishing, and the lack of a central | authority means everything stays the same or only gets worse. | | I had to stop playing because... let's put it politely and | say it was having a very bad influence on me. | mym1990 wrote: | I have recently transitioned to Teamfight Tactics and a bit | of Fall Guys, and have had much more enjoyment from it. But I | have also realized that everything in TFT is RNG based, and | is almost equivalent to playing a slot machine where every | pull takes 30-40 minutes. | | The scary thing with a 5v5 MOBA and a ranking system is that | a large part of the game falls outside of your control unless | you're that player that can consistently carry. So to that | point, you really have to take time to study the game and | psychology if you want to climb...but then you get wherever | you're going and realize you have almost nothing of value to | show for it. | skulk wrote: | > With the way the ranking system works this is basically | guaranteed that you'll lose half your games unless you're a | literally world class player. | | This is theoretically expected of skill-based matchmaking | systems. | ianbutler wrote: | You are right about sbmm, but it doesn't make for a good | progression system imo. If my hidden elo says I'm diamond | or w/e I should cruise through early ranks instead of being | matched with other diamond elo players climbing from | bronze. It should only feel like a slog/be super | competitive when the external rank matches the hidden elo. | Not the entire time IMO. | | Some games get this right, others (looking at you Apex | Legends Arenas Mode) does not and it just winds up being a | terrible slog. | dragontamer wrote: | > If my hidden elo says I'm diamond or w/e I should | cruise through early ranks instead of being matched with | other diamond elo players climbing from bronze. | | Or maybe you should stop making new accounts and stop | smurfing? | | I've been a beginner in plenty of games, and it sucks to | be matched against someone far above your skill level in | most games. | | ------ | | I get it. A lot of people want to be matched up against | weaker players so that they have an easy win. That | doesn't make it fair for the losers in this situation. | Furthermore, it weakens the community and turns it more | toxic. Expert players (or even advanced/intermediate | players) shouldn't seek out weak players and stomp them. | | 50% win ratios, for everyone, should be the default goal. | You climb the Elo to keep 50% win/loss, and as you lose, | you fall to 50% win/loss as well, or so the ideal is. | That way, everyone is on fair grounds. | | If you want someone to "feed you wins", maybe play a PvE | game like MMOs or something? But a competitive game is | zero-sum by default. Half the players lose, and half the | players win each game. So community managers need to | spread the wins and losses around in a fair way. | cube2222 wrote: | Actually, I think matching you against equal players | would be much better in such a situation, but you should | gain much more visible elo for wins than you lose for | losses (thus going up even with a 50% win rate). | bick_nyers wrote: | Lol so true. Why am I being matched up against top 500 | players when I am quite literally making my way through | bronze. | | Just double my queue time until we find a good match at | that point. | bick_nyers wrote: | There can still be issues. For example, how does the ELO | system view previous wins/losses when calculating ELO | gain/loss from future wins? | | Anecdote: My friends played the first few ranked seasons on | my Xbox Overwatch account, they started at Bronze and | eventually got to Silver. I decided to pick it up and play | ranked with a different friend, we won 9/10 of the | placement matches. I got ranked Silver, he got ranked | Platinum. A month later, I make a new Overwatch account on | PC and rank Platinum with ease. | | In these systems, if you gain a lot of skill in a short | amount of time, or have bad luck early on in your ranked | career, you can be held back in rank gains to the point | that you are essentially stuck in place. Creating a new | account generally allows you to advance significantly | faster through the ranks. | ben_w wrote: | Back when I was in game dev, I really wanted to find a way | to make them fun even when you lost. I never managed to | grok that magic, but I did see it in e.g. Settlers of | Catan. | mym1990 wrote: | This becomes a different beast when you introduce | competitive play. In non-ranked there is this feeling of | freedom to try new things, have fun, etc... but in ranked | it feels like things are on the line(despite those things | being so trivial as a few points up or down). | | Settlers is so fun because you really feel like you're on | a journey the whole game, and while it is nice to win, | you remember the interactions and experiences in the game | as the valuable thing(IMO). | andrepd wrote: | Unless the dice fuck you over extra hard x) | rintakumpu wrote: | Play with a deck of cards instead of dice! 36 cards, six | sevens, five eights and sixes and so on. | jack_pp wrote: | How is that supposed to help? A bad run is a bad run no | matter the randomizer. Also cards need to be shuffled | which wastes time if done correctly | ben_w wrote: | A deck of cards behaves the way the gambler's fallacy | expects everything to behave: after enough bad luck, | you're sure to get a good result. | mym1990 wrote: | And I actually only truly grasped this recently(the concept | makes sense). My paranoid self always thinks that in a game | like League, there are artificial matchmaking things going | on to keep you at 50%, apart from a stagnation of skill. In | truth, I probably just need to get better(at whatever, | doesn't have to be League). | jrockway wrote: | Yeah, if you win 50% of your games it means the | matchmaker is working perfectly. People really have a lot | of trouble understanding that. | | Also, to improve, you probably have to lose a bunch of | games while you're unlocking that new knowledge. The | toxicity of teammates kind of steers people away from | that. Thus people get stuck at where they place and never | go up or down significantly. | jnwatson wrote: | I'm confused as to what folks think the alternative is. | | Winning is a zero-sum game. If they target something | higher than 50%, there would have to be a reservoir of | players willing to take less than 50%... | mym1990 wrote: | It's not hard to come up with designs where you | effectively cycle types of queues to where the end result | is 50/50, but the pathway to get there is psychologically | manipulative(win streaks/loss streaks/etc...). | | Now, winning a single game of LoL is zero-sum, but you | can't say that the ratings themselves are. Without | knowing what the actual system is doing, we can't assume | that players are losing/winning the same number of | ranking points in a game. | bick_nyers wrote: | Unless of course if a team full of me would have a 70% | winrate, and the system is compensating (because hidden | ELO) by sticking me with teammates that each have 45% | winrates. | | It still averages out to 50% winrate. Just because you | can force a point of convergence does not mean it is the | correct point of convergence. | jrockway wrote: | Yeah, I definitely feel this variance in matchmaking. | play games with my friends every Saturday night and 8 | hours in after 5 beers, I doubt our MMR is quite as high | as it was when we started the session. (The first game | probably isn't great either!) But the matchmaker doesn't | really know these subtleties, so sometimes the enemies | get an easier than expected game. So it goes. | | The competitive ladder climbing meta is really about | recognizing when you shouldn't be playing and not playing | then. Interesting angle to optimize. | mym1990 wrote: | I don't think the system should even care for these | externalities because they will eventually balance out | across a player base and the net effect should be | zero(everyone will eventually play against a team with a | drunk person on it). But it creates a prolonged cycle and | general frustration amongst the player base. | bick_nyers wrote: | Yeah, if I want to climb a ladder I have to play first | thing in the morning (with physical exercise as well as | warmup games), and make sure I quit at the right time. | P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: | The issue is that riot has designed it so the 50% has | become the target rather than the metric. | | The result is that you'll go on win and loss streaks and if | you play long enough it becomes obvious it's being | manipulated that way. | | Winning 1 or 2 and losing 1 or 2 are just fine. | | winning 10-15 followed by losing 10-15 just feels bad and | isn't worth it. And if you've played long enough you can | start feeling when the tipping point is about to happen. | The wins will start getting more and more difficult as more | people on your team obviously don't belong in the game. Or | vice versa, and you'll start getting people on your teams | consistently such that nothing you do matters because | you'll just win. | | Then you add in a dash of streamers and people doing | "bronze to plat" challenges and it's just not fun. Either | they're losing on purpose to tank their rank or they're | pubstomping people far below their skill level. | | The end result is that it all just feels bad and the only | people that end up playing a significant number of games | are actively addicted to it. | mym1990 wrote: | Goodhart's Law! | leach wrote: | I don't even care when people are toxic, they are so easy to | bait into raging when they are. I suck at league and say I do | though so at least I'm honest. | csense wrote: | Headline says "online", but the description sounds like they're | on the same LAN. This matters because the latency between the | systems (LAN latency ~ 1ms, corresponding to frequency of ~1000 | Hz) is faster than the phenomena they're measuring (2-45 Hz). | | I'd assume the mechanism is that the player has a lot of | physicality, so their brain's pretending the on-screen avatar is | part of their body. If latency is artificially injected into the | display or controls or both, do the brain waves develop a phase | offset? Or does latency just cause the game's sense of | physicality to break down? | | Is interactivity and real-time interaction a necessary component | of brain wave synchronization? Or does it show up in non- | interactive settings as well? How could this be tested? | | I'm thinking what might be going on here is the game forces | players' brains' movement processing to physically simulate the | same vehicle. The brains aren't syncing with each other, they're | syncing with the on-screen object they're controlling -- which is | the same for both players, causing their brains to sync -- | transitively. | | Simply put, if Alice's brain syncs with the vehicle on screen A | and Bob's brain syncs with the vehicle on screen B and the two | screens are in sync with each other because that's what the | game's networking code is designed to do, the EEG ends up | measuring Alice's and Bob's brains to be in sync. | | I'd be interested in extending the experiment: Instead of giving | the two players a real-time multiplayer game, have them play a | single-player game one at a time, and see if their brains sync to | the gameplay in the same way. | | One problem is replicability. To produce the sync phenomenon, you | might need a game where the controllable character with good | "physicality" -- a tight feedback loop between its movement and | inputs, to convince the player's brain to treat their on-screen | character as an extension of their body. Give the player a | character they can't control, and their brain isn't convinced the | character is a part of them, and doesn't sync to it in the same | way. | | But if you give the player a character they _can_ control, | different people playing the game at different times will have | different inputs, meaning the phenomenon could be there but you | have no way to measure it. That is, Player A 's and Player B's | brain waves might sync to their individual games, but you can't | measure that with similarity analysis anymore, because in Player | A's game the vehicle took a different track than in Player B's | game. | | One way to solve this problem is to give them a character with a | physicality they have to consider but can't control. For example, | shooting targets from a vehicle -- your brain has to simulate the | vehicle's path to aim your shots, but you can't control its | movement directly. The players' brains' simulations of the | vehicle might end up in sync, leading to their brain waves being | in sync. | | Another way to solve this problem is to create a game with little | margin for departure from the correct path -- think about a Mario | Maker speedrun level with a tight timer. Successful runs by | different players will have very similar character paths and | controller inputs, because significant departure from the optimal | path results in failure. See if brain waves of different players | may end up in sync as they're executing the same moves with the | same timing. | soulofmischief wrote: | We see this behavior in rats[0] and monkeys[1] using various | methods of directly linking brains, and have shown that | communication spontaneously occurs even without physical | presence. Video games are one step of abstraction away from wires | and electrodes, but the science is still there. | | Seriously amazing stuff. | | [0] https://www.livescience.com/27544-rats-with-linked-brains- | wo... | | [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-have- | linked-3-mac... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-31 23:00 UTC)