Cerebral coherence between communicators marks the emergence of meaning.
How can we understand each other during communicative interactions? An influential suggestion holds that communicators are primed by each other's behaviors, with associative mechanisms automatically coordinating the production of communicative signals and the comprehension of their meanings. An alternative suggestion posits that mutual understanding requires shared conceptualizations of a signal's use, i.e., "conceptual pacts" that are abstracted away from specific experiences. Both accounts predict coherent neural dynamics across communicators, aligned either to the occurrence of a signal or to the dynamics of conceptual pacts. Using coherence spectral-density analysis of cerebral activity simultaneously measured in pairs of communicators, this study shows that establishing mutual understanding of novel signals synchronizes cerebral dynamics across communicators' right temporal lobes. This interpersonal cerebral coherence occurred only within pairs with a shared communicative history, and at temporal scales independent from signals' occurrences. These findings favor the notion that meaning emerges from shared conceptualizations of a signal's use.
['Stolk|Arjen|A|', 'Noordzij|Matthijs L|ML|', 'Verhagen|Lennart|L|', 'Volman|Inge|I|', 'Schoffelen|Jan-Mathijs|JM|', 'Oostenveld|Robert|R|', 'Hagoort|Peter|P|', 'Toni|Ivan|I|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D001519:Behavior D001921:Brain D001931:Brain Mapping D003142:Communication D006801:Humans D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging D008297:Male D055815:Young Adult
conceptual knowledge dual functional magnetic resonance imaging experimental semiotics social interaction theory of mind