Neuroscience in the workplace. A new perspective on complexity

Recent research by MIT and DARPA has looked at the neuroscience between team members and shown some interesting processes are at work. It began with studies into musicians performing together :

“Our findings show that interpersonally coordinated actions are preceded and accompanied by between-brain oscillatory couplings. Presumably, these couplings reflect similarities in the temporal properties of the individuals' percepts and actions. Whether between-brain oscillatory couplings play a causal role in initiating and maintaining interpersonal action coordination needs to be clarified by further research."

The idea is that neurodynamically a team gets into a rhythm – evident in the brainwaves of those involved :

"Decreases in NS_E entropy were associated with periods of poorer team performance as indicated by delays/omissions in the regular determination of the position; parallel communication data suggested that these were also periods of increased stress.
Experienced teams performed better than teams, had higher overall levels of NS_E entropy and appeared more cognitively flexible as indicated by the use of a larger repertoire of available NS_E patterns."

An MIT spin-off has developed wearable technology which allows this to be taken into the workplace :

http://hd.media.mit.edu/badges/

http://www.sociometricsolutions.com/

http://www.advancedbrainmonitoring.com/

Some promising findings - they can predict successful outcomes with some degree of accuracy. It opens up a new area for research into how people work together and handle complexity.

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