Sep 15, 2021 20:00:00

People who watch and listen to the same video or audiobook have found that 'heartbeat' is also synchronized, which may be a guide for people in a vegetative state to regain consciousness.

Past studies have reported cases in which brain activity is synchronized through specific behaviors, such as

'two people staring at each other ' and ' music player and viewer.' However, in addition to the activities of the brain 'heart rate' is synchronized with strangers case also check has been, in the new paper, which international research team has been announced, people who are watching or listening to the 'same story Heart rate is synchronized ', the research result was reported.

Conscious processing of narrative stimuli synchronizes heart rate between individuals: Cell Reports
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247 (21) 01139-6

Our heart rates synchronize when closely listening to the same stories
https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/mind-and-brain/our-heart-rates-synchronize-when-closely-listening-to-the-same-stories/

Neuroscience: People subconsciously sync their heart rates with the stories they listen to | Daily Mail Online
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9989445/Neuroscience-People-synchronise-heart-rates-listening-stories-study-finds.html

Pauline Pérez of the Paris Brain Institute and Jens Madsen of the City College of New York, who co-authored the lead authors of the paper, are interested in ways to investigate human consciousness and cognitive function in a less invasive way. I did. Brain scans exist as an existing method, but they thought that a simpler method using 'heart rate' that can be measured in many clinics could be used to examine human brain activity. That thing. So the research team conducted several experiments on 'seeing and hearing stories' to investigate the effects of human consciousness on heart rate.

First, in the first experiment, 27 adults were recruited as subjects and heard a 16-minute excerpt from the audiobook of Jules Verne's science fiction work 'Twenty Thousands of Seas.' The excerpt was a scene of a report about a mysterious monster destroying a ship, which the research team said was relatively suspenseful.

Examination of the subject's electrocardiogram listening to the audiobook revealed that the subject's heart rate changed as the story unfolded, with most subjects showing similar heart rate increases and decreases in the same scene. .. Since each subject was listening to the audiobook alone, there was no interaction, but 'listening to the same story' encouraged heart rate synchronization.

In the second experiment, we replaced the audiobook with 'five boring educational videos' and measured the heart rates of 27 subjects again enrolled at City University of New York. As a result, it was confirmed that the heart rates of the subjects who watched the video were also synchronized, and it was shown that they were synchronized even if they were not necessarily narrative. In addition, after watching the video normally, the subject was instructed to 'count by subtracting 7 from a specific number between 800 and 1000' and watched the video again. In this case, the synchronization of heart rates between subjects decreased, suggesting that 'attention to what you see and hear' plays a role in synchronization.

In the third experiment, 21 adults listened to a fairy tale in an audiobook and answered a test that later recalled it. In this experiment, some participants listened to the audiobook in a quiet environment, while the rest listened to it while being exposed to distracting disturbances. As a result of analyzing the test answers and the electrocardiogram, it was said that the higher the synchronization rate between the content of the fairy tale and the heart rate, the more accurately the content of the fairy tale was remembered in the test. The researchers say the results indicate that changes in heart rate are signals that consciously process the story.

In the final experiment,

a control group of 19 patients with unconsciousness or persistent vegetative disorder (vegetative state) and 24 healthy people listened to a fairy tale audiobook. As a result, it was found that the unconscious subjects had a significantly lower heart rate synchronization rate than the subjects in the control group. In addition, it seems that the subjects who were in a vegetative state but had a high synchronization rate had recovered their consciousness level 6 months after the experiment.

'In our research, heart rate is statistically meaningful among people, even though some experiments used educational videos with few emotional expressions,' said Madsen. It's amazing how they synced in some way. '' People's heart rates are adjusted by how much attention they pay to the story, whether it's an auditory story or a useful video. In addition, the heart rate of a person who pays attention to the story changes like a person who also pays attention, but if people are distracted for some reason, the change in heart rate will affect others. I will not follow you. '

Based on the results of this study, the research team also argues that measuring heart rate may be an easy way to assess a patient's state of consciousness. Checking your consciousness by brain waves or MRI requires a large-scale device, but if you just want to measure your heart rate, you can do it in a small clinic, ambulance, or even in a smartwatch. However, further research on heart rate and brain is needed to test this model.

“We are currently investigating the connection between the mind and body, where the heart plays an important role, along with other signals that can be measured when people interact with the world,” said Madsen.