Brain activity during reciprocal social interaction investigated using conversational robots as control condition

We present a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm for second-person neuroscience. The paradigm compares a human social interaction (human-human interaction, HHI) to an interaction with a conversational robot (human-robot interaction, HRI). The social interaction consists of 1 min blo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2019-04, Vol.374 (1771), p.20180033-20180033
Main Authors: Rauchbauer, Birgit, Nazarian, Bruno, Bourhis, Morgane, Ochs, Magalie, Prévot, Laurent, Chaminade, Thierry
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Brain - physiology
Cognitive science
Communication
Computer science
Female
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Linguistics
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Neuroscience
Psychology
Robotics
Speech - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:We present a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm for second-person neuroscience. The paradigm compares a human social interaction (human-human interaction, HHI) to an interaction with a conversational robot (human-robot interaction, HRI). The social interaction consists of 1 min blocks of live bidirectional discussion between the scanned participant and the human or robot agent. A final sample of 21 participants is included in the corpus comprising physiological (blood oxygen level-dependent, respiration and peripheral blood flow) and behavioural (recorded speech from all interlocutors, eye tracking from the scanned participant, face recording of the human and robot agents) data. Here, we present the first analysis of this corpus, contrasting neural activity between HHI and HRI. We hypothesized that independently of differences in behaviour between interactions with the human and robot agent, neural markers of mentalizing (temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and medial prefrontal cortex) and social motivation (hypothalamus and amygdala) would only be active in HHI. Results confirmed significantly increased response associated with HHI in the TPJ, hypothalamus and amygdala, but not in the medial prefrontal cortex. Future analysis of this corpus will include fine-grained characterization of verbal and non-verbal behaviours recorded during the interaction to investigate their neural correlates. This article is part of the theme issue 'From social brains to social robots: applying neurocognitive insights to human-robot interaction'.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2018.0033