Analysis of the information transfer between brains during a conversation

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Ahamed, Mohamed Rasmi Ashfaq | Babini, Mohammad Hossein | Namazi, Hamidreza^*

Affiliations: School of Engineering, Monash University, Selangor, Malaysia

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Hamidreza Namazi, School of Engineering, Monash University, Selangor, Malaysia. E-mail: hamidreza.namazi@monash.edu.

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The interaction between people is one of the usual daily activities. For this purpose, people mainly connect with others, using their voice. Voices act as the auditory stimuli on the brain during a conversation. OBJECTIVE: In this research, we analyze the relationship between the brains’ activities of subjects during a conversation. METHODS: Since human voice transfers information from one subject to another, we used information theory for our analysis. We investigated the alterations of Shannon entropy of electroencephalography (EEG) signals for subjects during a conversation. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that the alterations in the information contents of the EEG signals for the listeners and speakers are correlated. Therefore, we concluded that the brains’ activities of both subjects are linked. CONCLUSION: Our results can be expanded to analyze the coupling among other physiological signals of subjects (such as heart rate) during the conversation.

Keywords: Brain, conversation, information theory, shannon entropy, EEG signals

DOI: 10.3233/THC-202366

Journal: Technology and Health Care, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 283-293, 2021