Brain-to-brain Synchrony Predicts Classroom Performance of College Students

Brain-to-brain synchrony shapes but also constrains the social interactions of an individual. However, it remains unclear whether synchrony can effectively account for classroom learning outcomes. In this paper, we proposed to identify the neural markers of brain-to-brain synchrony to predict college students’ classroom performance. Thirty-two students and a teacher were recruited to participate in the experiment for eight lessons, which included lectures and in-class tests. The students’ brain activity was recorded simultaneously using electroencephalography (EEG) Hyperscanning. To assess cross-brain neural coherence, pairwise synchrony indices were calculated between students, which were further linked with their performance. As a result, stronger neural synchronization was found in pairs with high-performing students rather than low-performing students, likely driven by shared attention mechanisms. Our findings demonstrate that the proposed synchrony indices could serve as effective neural markers to predict college students' academic performance in a real-world setting.