It takes a village: an interdisciplinary community neuroscience approach to characterize multigenerational interactions

Introduction

While many of our daily interactions involve people of different ages, little is known about how the human brain supports naturalistic communication between generations. InterCom combines laboratory research with real-world experimentation, and intrapersonal analyses with interpersonal measures (e.g. ‘brain-to-brain synchrony’), to better understand multi-generational communication, both within and beyond family contexts.

Research Questions

• Do age-related differences in brain rhythms inhibit conversational flow?
• How do listeners process speech produced by children or older adults?
• Can intergenerational miscommunications be partly attributed to the fact that children and older adults are less likely to predict what others are about to say?
• How can we overcome implicit neurobehavioral culprits of misalignment?

Curiously, while laboratory studies have shown that there are significant differences in how children, adults, and older adults process (non)verbal information, these and related questions remain largely unanswered.

Methodology

InterCom will test a novel ‘community neuroscience’ approach, one that flows from the real world, to the lab, and back. We will collect brain, body, and language data from socio-culturally diverse groups of children, adults, and older adults during real-world storytelling events that are co-designed with community partners.

The data collected during these events will then inform and constrain subsequent laboratory studies and vice versa. As such, InterCom leverages the benefits while offsetting the downsides of both naturalistic observations and experimental control, and will innovate on and combine laboratory and real-world data collection, stimulus development, and data analysis in a truly reciprocal manner.

Conclusion

Together, InterCom will tread previously uncharted territory in both intergenerational and real-world neuroscience research to generate insights and tools to investigate and improve communication between and across generations.