A Preliminary Study of Interaction Effects on Brain Activity during Cooperative Work Using fNIRS

The primary goal of our research is to investigate brain functions during human-human cooperative work. For this preliminary study, a human-machine system to investigate cooperative work was developed. Blood flow changes in the brain were examined using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and a region of interest (ROI) was determined. The relationships between the difficulty in cooperation and brain activity were assessed. A tapping task between a person and a machine was performed as a cooperative task. The machine provided a sound stimulus and the person tapped in correspondence to this stimulus. The stimulus interval was fixed, but stimuli were presented with disturbances. We assumed that degree of this disturbance was equal to the difficulty of cooperation. Our results demonstrated that cerebral activation was observed near the inferior frontal gyrus when the stimulus disturbance increased. Thus, the inferior frontal gyrus was the cerebral region associated with cooperation.