Unison synchronize series#

'What's important is that the listener is paying attention to the actions in the story,' says Paris Brain Institute neuroscientist Jacobo Sitt. Memory retention has been shown to align with conscious perception, so this suggests our hearts play a beat in time with our mind's conscious processing of the narrative, the researchers explain. The instructional video showed this phenomenon was not tied with emotion, which is something previous studies have theorized after observing this synchrony in people watching the same movie.īut disrupting the volunteers' concentration – by making them count backwards or subjecting them to distracting sounds – diminished their heart's synchronicity, and their ability to recall the narrative. Listening to a 1-minute snippet of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in one experiment, or a few minutes of instructional videos in another, heart rates were seen to synchronize between study participants, regardless of where they were.

Unison synchronize series#

Paris Brain Institute neuroscientist Pauline Pèrez and colleagues monitored volunteers' heart rates during a series of experiments, using an electrocardiogram. In other words, you need to be conscious of what is happening. And for that, you need to know what is going on around you. 'We think it is because you need to be ready to act, at a moment's notice. 'Why does your heart rate go up and down like that?' asks study co-author and biomedical engineer Lucas Parra on Twitter. Some one else listening to the same story will have the same heart rate fluctuations: Your heart rate fluctuates, naturally, even when you are just sitting there, doing nothing, maybe listening to a story on the radio.

Stories play a powerful role in shaping the world we've created for ourselves, and it turns out they may even be able to dictate the rhythm of our own heartbeats.Ī preliminary study looking at what happens in our bodies as we pay attention to these tales has found our hearts start beating in unison – even if we're miles away from each other.