Recording brain activity can function as an implied social presence and alter neural connectivity

ABSTRACT

People often behave differently when they know they are being watched. Here, we report the first investigation of whether such social presence effects also include brain monitoring technology, and also their impacts on the measured neural activity. We demonstrate that merely informing participants that fMRI has the potential to observe (thought-related) brain activity is sufficient to trigger changes in functional connectivity within and between relevant brain networks that have been previously associated selectively with executive and attentional control as well as self-relevant processing, social cognition, and theory of mind. These results demonstrate that an implied social presence, mediated here by recording brain activity with fMRI, can alter brain functional connectivity. These data provide a new manipulation of social attention, as well as shining light on a methodological hazard for researchers using equipment to monitor brain activity.

KEYWORDS:

• Resting state fMRI
• privacy concerns
• invasive technology

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies through grant [W911NF-09-0001] from the U.S. Army Research Office to BT, TS, and MM, and a Discovery Grant to AK by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, and an Insight Grant to EFR and AK by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors would also like to thank Misty L. Schubert for her assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

Unthresholded statistical parametric maps will be uploaded to a public repository (neurovault.org). Code and scripts used in analysis will be made available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies through contract W911NF-09-D-0001 with the U.S. Army Research Office.