Neuroscience of Teamwork
Humans are born dependent, slow, and vulnerable—but we’ve survived by working together. In this episode, we explore the neuroscience that makes teamwork possible, and why collaboration is more than a soft skill—it’s a biological necessity.
From mirror neurons and social cognition to trust, reward systems, and brain synchrony, we break down what’s really happening in your brain when you collaborate—and what it takes to build a team that actually works.
If you have any topic suggestions for future episodes, don't hesitate to reach out! Send us an email at info@brainblownpodcast.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
REFERENCES
David A. Waldman, M.K. Ward, William J. Becker — Neuroscience in Organizational Behavior
Stephanie Balters, Grace Hawthorne, Naam Mayseless — Of Team Cooperation Versus Team Collaboration
Paul Zak — The Neuroscience of Trust
M.K. Ward, Stefan Volk, William J. Becker — An Overview of Organizational Neuroscience
Mohammed Algumaei, Imali T. Hettiarachchi, Mohamed Farghaly, Asim Bhatti — The Neuroscience of Team Dynamics: Exploring Neurophysiological Measures for Assessing Team Performance
Diego A. Reinero, Suzanne Dikker, Jay J. Van Bavel — Inter-brain Synchrony in Teams Predicts Collective Performance
Hua Xie, Iliana I. Karipidis, Amber Howell, Manish Saggar et al. — Finding the Neural Correlates of Collaboration Using a Three-person fMRI Hyperscanning Paradigm
Xinmei Deng, Meng Yang, Xiaomin Chen, Yong Zhan — The Role of Mindfulness on Theta Inter-brain Synchrony During Cooperation Feedback Processing: An EEG-based Hyperscanning Study
General Outline of Episode
1. Intro & Overview
This season, we’ve been exploring how our brains respond to the people and environments around us—how connection, safety, and regulation shape the way we think and behave.
Today, we’re taking that idea into one of the most essential parts of human life: working together.
In this case, teamwork isn’t just a skill—it is our survival mechanism. And the science behind it reveals how deeply social our brains truly are.
One take away this podcast has been focusing on, though we stumbled across it accidentally, is the power of human connection. How individually we are weaker, slower, and less cool than most predators, most of our competition for food. So what made us, us? When we need so much food to survive because of our shorter digestive system, because our brains require so much energy. Yeah, brains are cool, but they don’t mean much when you can’t feed them, when you can’t beat out a tiger or a bear for meat or shelter. So, how did we become us? When do our babies come out so weak and dependent on adults? When they are helpless, unlike other mamalels and we needed to both compete agains predtators, and survive and take care of the next us, so we didn’t die out. The answer is, by working together, by connection, by team work.
So, this is the neuroscience of teamwork.
2. Theoretical Foundation
The heart of teamwork is the ability to understand one another. We can’t work together until we at least have an understanding of where others are coming from. Until we know that, we can’t work together on a shared goal, because without it, we have no idea why people are doing the things they are doing or to what end. Waldman, Ward, and Beker ask, “Have you ever asked the question, “What’s going on in this person’s head that makes the person think or act the way that he or she does?”. They state that we often do that, that we are trying to understand each other, but for the longest time, we didn’t actually research this. The truth is, as we have covered, is that neuroscience, the way we think of it is new. So it's no surprise that any offshoot of it is new. But even within that, most of what we have tried to understand is understanding the human brain in a vacuum, all alone. What is very, very new is exactly what this season has been about - the more we understand the human brain, the more we learn that we change a lot when we are around each other. We know, and learned in season 1, that our whole nervous system changes, our body changes, and no surprise, our brain changes. That happens when we don’t feel safe, but humans are the most common aspect of what makes us feel safe. Or unsafe.
And yet, we had no idea how to research this. But thus, Organizational Neuroscience was born. From it, some core concepts have come into place that we will cover in this episode. To start with, it is what we started with - understanding one another. Thus:
Social Cognition & Theory of Mind.
In essence, the ability to understand one another means we have to understand what one another is thinking, their intentions, their frame of reference, and how they got to that conclusion. In addition, research will state that understanding their emotions is the key to teamwork.
Mirror Neuron System
We have covered this a lot here, but this is our natural mirroring system that when we are regulated gives us insight into not only why someone might do something, but how to mimic or ape that same thing, which helps connect us with others as it hits an ancient part of our brain that says “you are a part of my tribe”.
Empathy & Emotional Regulation and Oxytocin and Trust
We covered this a lot both in the first season and the first episode of this season. To really be in spaces where we do good work, we need to trust eachother. When we trust each other we do amzaing things. But to trust, we need to be emotionally regulated and be around people who are emotionally regulated (becaues no one is 100% 100% of the time). When we all stay emotionally regulated we have more access to empathy which helps our ability to listen to one another and build off one another. We know from our first episode this season that oxytocin also helps build that trust. This also reduces conflict and helps us stay focused on the same goal.
Reward & Motivation Systems
Being aware of our reward and motivation helps us connect and collaborate to saying on the same goal and working towards the same goal.
Cognitive Control & Decision-Making
Having people who can help us manage the attention, not only of themselves but of the group, reduce impulsivity or redirect and make decisions with clear, effective communication.
Neural Synchrony
This is new and exciting but we have recent research in this field that shows that t successful teams have members who can manage brain-to-brain synchrony - this is something that happens in the brain to help different peoples neural activity aligned when engaging in a cooperative task.
Paul Zak in an document researching the overview of success in companies and teams states “high engagement—defined largely as having a strong connection with one’s work and colleagues, feeling like a real contributor, and enjoying ample chances to learn—consistently leads to positive outcomes for both individuals and organizations. The rewards include higher productivity, better-quality products, and increased profitability,” and specifically that building a culture of trust is what makes all the difference.
3. What Happens in the Brain?
I feel like we say this alot, but alot. Specifically, certain areas that we highlighted earlier, we are going to go into the brain regions that impact all of that. Starting back with
Social Cognition & Theory of Mind.
The ability to understand one another, the what and why of someone else’s thoughts, is something we have covered a few times. Xie et all will state “The ToM network, often also referred to as the mentalizing network (6), has core regions consisting of the bilateral temporo‐parietal junction (TPJ) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).”, additionally found to have support from the superior temporal sulcus or STS.
Mirror Neuron System
We have also covered mirroring neurons a lot here, starting with season one where we delved deep in to the neuroscience of empathy. This is the part of our brain that fires when someone else is doing something and is our first building block of empathy. According to Acharya and Shukla this is largely found in the “premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex, and the inferior parietal cortex”. Your premototal corex is in the frontal lobe, near your primary motor corex and helps initiation, regulating movement, and planning movement, with the supplementary motor ara found near by, and next to the somasensory cortex - which as we covered in the neuroscience of phatmom limbs connects with your motor cotex to help you move int he world, and somewhat further back where we see the inferior parietal cortex which helps us process space, language, atttetnion and social interaction.
Empathy & Emotional Regulation Oxytocin and Trust
As we covered in the first episode of this season, we know that Oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide, plays a role in promoting trust and social bonding. Trust is so necessary for teams to work. Emotional regualtion and emapthy are key to trust. Algumaei, Hettiarachchi, Farghaly and Bhattti state “Emotional contagion refers to the phenomenon in which emotions are transmitted between individuals, leading to shared emotional experiences within the team” and states specifically “When team members are exposed to the emotions of their colleagues, they can "catch" those emotions and experience similar affective states.” Admittedly this has pros and cons, but an unexpected pro is that it influences processes, such as communication, decisionmaking, and conflict resolution [122]. They go one to further state the need to regulate ones own emotions, and to help regulate others matters, and that “higher levels of emotional intelligence demonstrate better interpersonal skills, conflict management, and the ability to maintain a positive team climate. This is vital for good communication, yes but also hugly demonstrated to play a significant role in overall success. They state “by acknowledging the role of emotions and their contagious nature within teams, organisations can develop strategies to manage emotionsand create a positive emotional climate that supports team productivity and well-being. Which is shown to create lasting impact for the trust and health of an orgaization.
Crucial areas to regulation are understanding the impact that our gmaydala has on us, as well as our insula which is picking up how comfortable or safe our body fels in space. We know that the anterior cicngulate cortex (our brain’s middle manger) helps to regulate and focus this area as well as our ventromedial prefrontal cortex and our dorsal laderal prefrontal corext which helps down reulgage our amygdala and more accurately understand social interactions.
Reward & Motivation Systems
We have covered this over and over again, almost every season I think since season 2. Pleasure, motivation and reward are key to keeping us just continuing to eat and have sex and do basic things to keep the survival of our species going, let alone work collaboratively and effectively in a team workplace environment. So since this is pleasure, it means we are yet again talking about our ventral striatum, nucleus accumbens, dopamine pathways. And we covered in season 2, social interaction is huge to this and is one of the greatest impacts to human pleasure. So its no surprise that “Stevens et al. delved into a neurodynamics study, seeking to uncover the essence of teamwork in challenging problem-solving tasks” and found that our pleasure, engagement and continued high workload was found when we feel we are connecting with one another on a task.
Cognitive Control & Decision-Making
We know that we need the ability to stay focused and make decisions to help staty on task. Christian and Ellis found that our prefrontal cortex is important for executive control, and if impaired, self-control also seems to falter. We know that again the preprontal cortex and anterior cigulate cortex are important in this area (which means that we need to be regulated to access to this) And Zhang et al. found that in research involving multipel people engaged in a decision-making game “higher inter-brain synchrony in the right dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex (DLPFC) for group decision-making”. Which is important in that brain break area of keeping our amygdala under control.
Neural Synchrony
Algumaei, Hettiarachchi, Farghaly and Bhattti state “Interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) is a fascinating phe nomenon that occurs when the neural activity of two or more individuals becomes synchronised during a shared task or social interaction. It reflects the coordination and alignment of neural processes between individuals, highlighting the interconnected nature of our brains . Studies have demonstrated that INS plays a crucial role in team performance,yielding several benefits for collaborative endeavors. One significant advantage is improved coordination among team members. When neural activity synchronises, individuals can effectively align their actions, timing, and responses, leading to smoother and more efficient coordination within the team”. In essence this research is showing that sometimes engaging in a group changes what part our brain we need to do a task, and matters to improving our overall effectiveness. To improve this “Cha et al” specifically looked at neural synchronisation between pairs of individuals when engaging incollaborative work. “They discovered that neural synchronisation increased during collaboration, indicating enhanced communication and improved teamwork.”.
4. Practical Application (Strategies & Takeaways)
Andrew Carnegie's once said that "Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." Companies from Google to Apple to Nasa have shown that coordiatned teamwork is required to achieve the giant leaps in progress. But if its that easy, why doesn’t everyone do it. How do we do this?
A key component is building on areas we can. We take this in the same sections we started with and talk about how to build on them.
Social Cognition & Theory of Mind is where we will start, though its the trickiest one. This is a build upon skill and practicing it is helpful. An easy take away one for companies is to help create team building activities that build on theory of mind. Helping people to test and practice their ability to understand where there coworkers are coming from and build on it. Hiring people who have these skills, even if not for every role but for some can be very helpful, though something HR rarely looks for. Additionally building in a culture where we own ‘the story we are telling ourself’ so we can show where our own interpretation, baggage, past history, or issues get in the way of theory of mind also helps.
Mirroring Neurons - this is also often found increased from an early age but there are ways to build on this. Specifically we stated most of hte areasof where this is, and weirdly they are all at the top part of our brain, which means if we are not regulated, we might not have access to this at all. Keeping a calm and regulated environment incraaseds our abity to understand our mirroring neurons. But as this is also built from empathy that we know that moving in music, moving together and aping increase this. Which brings us to empaty, emotional regualtin, oxytocin and trust. Feel free to listen our our first episode of this season if you haven’t already for more indepth take aways on improving thi, but a key pieces of this is the emotional vulnerablity and emotinal understading to build on this. We need people form a top levels especially that have a strong emotional intelligence and ability to regulate themselves and others. Because all of this flows down. Being emitoanlly regulated is what allows us to feel empathy. Feeling empathy and connection helps us have more oxytocin when we interact with one another and when we have oxytocin that impacts how much we trust one another. Since time and time again trust has been show to be at the base of all successful orgaotions, building trust matters.
Reward and motivation means impacting pleasure and building on pleasure. To have pleasure we neeed to chase, enjoy and learn. This is key take aways. People have reportledly stated they like their job more when they feel they are contributing to something bigger, when they have impact, and when they have say. Stress is not bad, but unmanageable unending stress that doesn’t have someone ever feeling they can be successful is bad. Managers need to provide a challenge, sure, but one that can be accomplished and know how to build and build off of this to increase the challenge as the skills, comfortant and confidence of a team is created. We need to be challenged, seek that ability to overcome, overcome successfully and be acknowledged for it, and know how to build off of it.
Unmanageable unending stress, even when we succeed leaves us feeling drained and overwhelmed. We don’t feel like we know how we succeeded often, which lets us feel like a fraud, like we just ‘got lucky’ and neverending means we don’t have any reward for accmplising a task. This leads to burnout and leaving positions.
Cognitive Control and Decision Making are again impacted heavily in areas of the brain that we lose access to if we are drained or stressed. They require regulation. This means a culture of fear and stress will remove the overall ability and success of any team to have cognitive control and make decisions.
And Being in nural synchrony. This needs things like team training and coaching, finding ways to check in one with another and building off of it.
By doing this and understanding it we have the ability to build and improve our ability to work together, to think creatively and out of the box, to naviage conflic, to stay in a collaborative problem soving environment and also be high preforming. There isn’t much we can’t do, if we can only figure out how to work together.
5. Closing & Recap
If companies from Google to Apple to Nasa have shown that coordiatned teamwork is required to achieve the giant leaps in progress. But if its that easy, why doesn’t everyone do it.
Generally most research will tell you about the importance of this, but won’t tell you how to build it, which is part of the struggle. How is much harder to figure out? When researching when this doesn’t work, most research will interestingly list most of what we discussed, trust, communication, not having the same goals as the concerns, specifically that if this is lacking then teams don’t preform well. So essentially if this exists its great, and if its missing your company is going to struggle. But they rarely list why these things occur.
One area that is strongly documented is leadership, but because that is a big enough component, that means it probably needs its own episode.
Something not mentioned often, but that we alluded to in our first episode of this season is that you have to trust in trust. Companies often get this information, they can see the data on the value of improving this, but what this takes is completely redoing the way we have been doing a lot of what we think is successful. And even with data point after data point, listeners of this podcast have come to learn that we don’t make decisions based on data. We don’t make them logically, we make them emotionally. And if you have been listening to this podcast for a long time, we are really diving deep into how much we change when we lose trust. When we are hurting or afraid or stressed or uncertain - our nervous system changes and we start to act out in fear. Fear means we go back to what we know. Fear means change is unmanageable. Fear changes us.
Why don’t more companies do this? Because it sounds great, until we lose our emotional reguation. And then logic is not what we are responding to anymore.
