How a speaker herds the audience: multibrain neural convergence over time during naturalistic storytelling

Abstract

Storytelling—an ancient way for humans to share individual experiences with others—has been found to induce neural alignment among listeners. In exploring the dynamic fluctuations in listener–listener (LL) coupling throughout stories, we uncover a significant correlation between LL coupling and lagged speaker–listener (lag-SL) coupling over time. Using the analogy of neural pattern (dis)similarity as distances between participants, we term this phenomenon the “herding effect.” Like a shepherd guiding a group of sheep, the more closely listeners mirror the speaker’s preceding brain activity patterns (higher lag-SL similarity), the more tightly they cluster (higher LL similarity). This herding effect is particularly pronounced in brain regions where neural alignment among listeners tracks with moment-by-moment behavioral ratings of narrative content engagement. By integrating LL and SL neural coupling, this study reveals a dynamic, multibrain functional network between the speaker and the audience, with the unfolding narrative content playing a mediating role in network configuration.