title: Defecting or not defecting: how to "read" human behavior during cooperative games by EEG measurements.
abstract: Understanding the neural mechanisms responsible for human social interactions is difficult, since the brain activities of two or more individuals have to be examined simultaneously and correlated with the observed social patterns. We introduce the concept of hyper-brain network, a connectivity pattern representing at once the information flow among the cortical regions of a single brain as well as the relations among the areas of two distinct brains. Graph analysis of hyper-brain networks constructed from the EEG scanning of 26 couples of individuals playing the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma reveals the possibility to predict non-cooperative interactions during the decision-making phase. The hyper-brain networks of two-defector couples have significantly less inter-brain links and overall higher modularity--i.e., the tendency to form two separate subgraphs--than couples playing cooperative or tit-for-tat strategies. The decision to defect can be "read" in advance by evaluating the changes of connectivity pattern in the hyper-brain network.
authors.affiliation: NEILab, Scientific Institute for Research Hospitalization and Health Care IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Fabrizio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: De Vico Fallani
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Nicosia
authors.forename: Roberta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sinatra
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Astolfi
authors.forename: Febo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cincotti
authors.forename: Donatella
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mattia
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wilke
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Doud
authors.forename: Vito
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Latora
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Babiloni
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D003071:Cognition; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005716:Game Theory; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical