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How Communicating Through a Screen Affects Your Brain

Zoom. Microsoft Teams. Messenger. FaceTime. Skype. You’re probably familiar with all these video conferencing platforms and since the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been using them more than ever before.

As we mentioned in a past blog, one 2021 survey shows that 54% of professionals now attend more (virtual) meetings than they used to pre-pandemic (in-person).

But how does communicating through a screen affect the brain, particularly in kids?

Until now, little research has been done on the impact of technology-enhanced communication on the social brain.

Recently a research team led by Guillaume Dumas, a professor at the University of Montreal wanted to answer the question: could technologically mediated interactions have neurobiological consequences that interfere with the development of social and cognitive abilities?

The Study and Results

For this study, Dumas and his research team compared brain electrical activity during face-to-face interaction and technologically assisted remote communication in 62 mother-child pairs in which the children were aged 10 to 14.

Using a technique called hyper-scanning, which can simultaneously record brain activity in multiple subjects, the research team found that interaction via a videoconferencing platform attenuated mother-child brain synchrony.

The study found that face-to-face interactions elicited nine significant cross-brain links between frontal and temporal areas of the brain, whereas remote interactions generated only one.

If brain-to-brain synchrony is disrupted, we can expect consequences for the child’s cognitive development, particularly the mechanisms that support social interaction and these are life-long effects.

Societal Impacts

Dr. Matsumoto is not surprised by these findings. Humans did not evolve to do 2-dimensional communication, such as through a computer screen. On the contrary, we have evolved our perceptual senses to live in a 3-dimensional world and our sense of reality is grounded in that fact.

According to researcher Dumas, the study’s findings can also be extrapolated to adults and may explain the widespread “Zoom fatigue” following the rise in videoconferencing during the COVID lockdowns.

Since online interactions produce less brain-to-brain synchrony, it is understandable that people would feel they have to expend more effort and energy to interact, the interactions seem more laborious and less natural.

Dumas believes the study confirms that social relationships are critically important to humans and that inter-brain mechanisms are linked to the development of the social brain.

It seems like humans are interconnected by a technology more potent than Zoom or Teams: our brains.

Harmful Effects of Screens

Dumas’ latest research adds to the growing body of evidence regarding the harmful effects of screens.

A longitudinal cohort study out of Singapore suggests that greater exposure to screen time during infancy was linked to poor self-regulation and brain maturity at age eight.

Another study has suggested that soothing a child with digital devices may lead to more problems with emotional reactivity down the road.

In the study published in the JAMA Pediatrics, researchers looked at 422 parent and caregiver responses.

They found that parents and caregivers who frequently using digital devices to distract from unpleasant and disruptive behavior like tantrums was associated with more emotional dysregulation in kids — particularly boys and children who were already struggling with emotional regulation.

Dr. Jenny Radesky, associate professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Michigan Medical School says,

When you see your 3- to 5-year-old having a tough emotional moment, meaning they are screaming and crying about something, they’re getting frustrated, they might be hitting or kicking or lying on the floor. … If your go-to strategy is to distract them or get them to be quiet by using media, then this study suggests that is not helping them in the long term.

Other Alternatives to Screen Time

Zones of Regulation

Instead of distraction, Radesky recommends taking tantrums and emotional dysregulation as opportunities for adults to teach children how to identify and respond to emotions in helpful ways. Here are some of her tips:

1. Get Comfy

Instead of punishing their expressions of frustration, anger or sadness with a time-out, it can be a good idea to set up a comfy place for kids to collect their feelings — maybe something with beanbags or blankets or a tent.

2. Name the Emotion

It can be helpful for caregivers to help kids name their emotions and offer solutions when they are responding inappropriately to those feelings.

3. Use Color Zones

Sometimes talking about emotions are too abstract for preschool-age kids, and in those cases Radesky recommended using color zones to talk about emotions.

Calm and content can be green; worried or agitated can be yellow; and upset or angry can be red, using graphics or images of faces to help kids match what they’re feeling with what color zone they are in. To reinforce it, adults can talk about their own emotions in terms of colors in front of their kids, Radesky said.

You and your child can go through the colors together and write down calming tools for the different zones, she added.

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Babies Smile in Utero When Mom Eats Carrots But Frown When it’s Kale

A study led by Durham University’s Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab and published in the journal Psychological Science provides the first direct evidence that babies react to taste and smell in the womb.

The researchers took 4D ultrasound scans of 100 pregnant women to see how their unborn babies responded after being exposed to flavors from foods eaten by their mothers.

Thirty-five of the women took a capsule containing powdered carrot and 34 took a kale capsule. After 20 minutes researchers looked at each fetus using a 4D ultrasound. The mothers also did not eat or drink anything containing carrot or kale on the day of their scans to control for factors that could affect fetal reactions.

The results?

Evidence shows that facial expressions begin in utero; data shows that laughing and smiling begin in the womb as early as 24 weeks and are very prevalent by week 32.

Fetuses exposed to carrot showed more “laughter-face” responses while those exposed to kale showed more “cry-face” responses.  Their findings could further our understanding of the development of human taste and smell receptors.

Facial reactions seen in both flavor groups, compared with fetuses in a control group who were not exposed to either flavor, showed that exposure to just a small amount of carrot or kale flavor was enough to stimulate a reaction.

Babies in utero
Fig. 1. Example of cry-face gestalt of a kale-exposed fetus: (a) baseline, (b) cry-face gestalt (apex). FM11 = nasolabial furrow; FM16 = lower-lip depressor.
Fig. 2. Example of laughter-face gestalt of a carrot-exposed fetus: (a) baseline, (b) laughter-face gestalt (apex). FM6 = cheek raiser; FM12 = lip-corner puller.

The researchers also believe that what pregnant women eat might influence babies’ taste preferences after birth and potentially have implications for establishing healthy eating habits.

Humans experience flavor through a combination of taste and smell. In fetuses it is thought that this might happen through inhaling and swallowing the amniotic fluid in the womb.

Lead researcher Beyza Ustun, a postgraduate researcher in the Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab, Department of Psychology, Durham University, said:

“A number of studies have suggested that babies can taste and smell in the womb, but they are based on post-birth outcomes while our study is the first to see these reactions prior to birth. As a result, we think that this repeated exposure to flavors before birth could help to establish food preferences post-birth, which could be important when thinking about messaging around healthy eating and the potential for avoiding ‘food-fussiness’ when weaning. It was really amazing to see unborn babies’ reaction to kale or carrot flavors during the scans and share those moments with their parents.”

The researchers say their findings might also help with information given to mothers about the importance of taste and healthy diets during pregnancy. They have now begun a follow-up study with the same babies post-birth to see if the influence of flavors they experienced in the womb affects their acceptance of different foods.

Research co-author Professor Jackie Blissett, of Aston University, said: “It could be argued that repeated prenatal flavor exposures may lead to preferences for those flavors experienced postnatally. In other words, exposing the fetus to less ‘liked’ flavors, such as kale, might mean they get used to those flavors in utero.

“The next step is to examine whether fetuses show less ‘negative’ responses to these flavors over time, resulting in greater acceptance of those flavors when babies first taste them outside of the womb.”

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Past Blog: Raising Awareness About Active Shooter Incidents

This past weekend’s horrific events at a Buffalo supermarket and California church are stark reminders that active shooter incidents are incredibly frightening events that often have deadly consequences for individuals, and dire consequences for organizations.

The term “active shooter” describes a “situation in which a shooting is in progress and an aspect of the crime may affect the protocols used in responding to and reacting at the scene of an incident” (Blair & Schweit, 2014, p. 4). Most government agencies in the U.S. define “active shooter” as an “individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area” (Blair & Schweit, 2014, p. 5).

Since they have been studied, active shooter incidents have been steadily increasing over the years, causing increasing numbers of casualties, including many who have been killed or wounded (Blair, Martaindale, & Nichols, 2014; Blair & Schweit, 2014).

Active Shooter Preparedness: How to Protect Your [+Checklist] - AlertMedia

Unsurprisingly, most of these events have occurred at businesses. Because these data are cause for grave concern for any organization, private or public, it is no wonder that many organizations are coming to grips with the reality of considering ways of dealing with, managing, and preventing these kinds of incidents to occur.

ABC News on Twitter: "Of the 27 active shooter incidents in the country last year, four were at a high school and one was at a middle school. Those five school shootings

Obviously there are multitude of ways to approach this very important problem for security professionals. The first step is often raising awareness of this important issue, as many security professionals and organizations unfortunately remain in the dark about the frequency and/or severity of these types of events.

Raising awareness alone is not enough; what is equally if not more important is to actively consider, implement, monitor, and refine a comprehensive security plan in order not only to deal with these incidents when they occur – as well as their aftermath – but also how to prevent them in the first place.

By now many security professionals have heard of the current rendition of the “best” response to an active shooter incident, involving the mantra “Run, Hide, Fight.” But let’s dive deeper into how this may actually occur in an active shooter situation.

In reality, data on active shooter incidents have shown that 70% of such incidents ended in five minutes or less, with 37% ending in two minutes or less (Blair & Schweit, 2014). At the same time, the average (median) response time by law enforcement officers to the scene is about three minutes.

These statistics indicate that civilians often have to make life and death decisions in a very short time, and in a very emotional situation. How to do so?

My many years of training athletes in Olympic judo competition gives us clues about how to approach the problem. These are also highly charged situations in which split second decisions need to be made when one is hyper aroused. In fact we have clocked athletes’ heart rates in competition upwards of 200 beats/minute.

Given that that is what is occurring in real life, it becomes very clear very quickly that training in what to do in a very neutral, calm environment (e.g., a classroom lecture or workshop) has little or no bearing on making constructive changes to behaviors in the hyper charged situation.

While classroom workshops on active shooter incidents are great for raising awareness, their potential in producing effective behaviors in a hyper charged situation is extremely limited. What is needed is training that simulates, as close as possible, the actual environment in which the desired behaviors need to take place. The most effective training will be that which produces that simulation well.

There are many ways to think about prevention as well. Research has increasingly documented the signs and signals of impending violence (Matsumoto, Frank, & Hwang, 2015; Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013, 2014; Matsumoto, Hwang, & Frank, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2016), much of which can be transformed into proactive detection capabilities to intervene before things escalate.

For more on this research, visit this past blog. 

Moreover, recent research on lone actors and other actors who perform violent acts against others has documented that many – upwards of 80 – 90% of these individuals – leak their plans and intentions in some way, shape, or form to others (Meloy & Gill, 2016; Meloy, Roshdi, Glaz-Ocik, & Hoffman, 2015). Heightened awareness of these signs and signals, and procedures for reporting these to security professionals may be of interest.

These are just some of the many ways to consider how to deal with, manage, and prevent active shooter incidents. Perhaps the most important factor to consider, however, and perhaps the most difficult, is to find the courage and conviction to truly deal with them in the first place.

References Cited

Blair, J. P., Martaindale, H., & Nichols, T. (2014). Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2012. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, January. Retrieved from https://leb.fbi.gov/2014/january/active-shooter-events-from-2000-to-2012 website:

Blair, J. P., & Schweit, K. W. (2014). A study of active shooter incidents in the United States between 2000 and 2013. Washington, D.C.: Texas State University and Federal Bureau of Investigation. U.S. Department of Justice.

Matsumoto, D., Frank, M. G., & Hwang, H. C. (2015). The role of intergroup emotions on political violence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24, 369-373. doi: 10.1177/0963721415595023.

Matsumoto, D., & Hwang, H. C. (2013). The language of political aggression. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32, 335-348. doi: 10.1177/0261927X12460666.

Matsumoto, D., & Hwang, H. C. (2014). Facial signs of imminent aggression. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 1, 118-128. doi: 10.1037/tam0000007.

Matsumoto, D., Hwang, H. C., & Frank, M. G. (2013). Emotional language and political aggression. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32, 452-468. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0261927X12474654.

Matsumoto, D., Hwang, H. C., & Frank, M. G. (2014a). Emotions expressed by leaders in videos predict political aggression. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 6, 212-218. doi: 10.1080/19434472.2013.769116.

Matsumoto, D., Hwang, H. C., & Frank, M. G. (2014b). Emotions expressed in speeches by leaders of ideologically motivated groups predict aggression. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 6, 1-18. doi: 10.1080/19434472.2012.716449.

Matsumoto, D., Hwang, H. C., & Frank, M. G. (2016). The effects of incidental anger, contempt, and disgust on hostile language and implicit behaviors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. doi: 10.1111/jasp.12374.

Meloy, J. R., & Gill, P. (2016). The lone-actor terrorist and the TRAP-18. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 3, 37-52. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tam0000061.

Meloy, J. R., Roshdi, K., Glaz-Ocik, J., & Hoffman, J. (2015). Investigating the individual terrorist in Europe. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 2, 140-152. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tam0000036.

 EditRaising Awareness about Active Shooter Incidents

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