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When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

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Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#71
I'm not seeing what about this isn't obvious. If you stimulate a crowd of people by firing a gun into the air they all react at the same time. If you stimulate a group of people with a stimulus it's possible to ignore like a story only the ones not ignoring it will react.

Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#73

I’ve always been bad at telling stories. Listeners would more likely fall asleep in sync than have their hearts racing. HN have any tips, tricks, books or blogs to help with story telling skills?

I’m bad as well. But if I were to set out to improve, I’d just listen to more deliberate storytelling. Then practice, write, edit, tell, and tell again. The craft of stand up comedy has always interested me and you can find some nuggets by listening to popular comedians talk about how they develop a skit or entire performance.

Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#74
Oddball question: I wonder if that syncing happens with people who are not neurotypical -- examples, ADHD, Autism, etc.

Are the syncing happening because of following along the narrative structure and character emotions? What about use of music scores, visual cues, etc.?

To what extent of this syncing happens with personality types or emotional states? For example, do extroverts tend to sync more than introverts? If someone is relaxed and attentive vs. someone is anxious and distracted, how much would that change?

Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#75

Am following this topic from another thread on HN today about soundscapes and binaural beats, and what is the theoretical framework behind it, or is it just sympathetic magic? I was in a meeting yesterday about the truth and reconciliation stuff going on in Canada right now, and the first hour of the meeting was given to people who were sharing their experiences of residential schools by telling stories about them. T…

I'm not an expert on this exact subject, but my PhD was in computational neuroscience, specifically spiking neural networks, and I became a bit interested in the area of binaural beats. On exposure to binaural beats, neural networks in the brain can to synchronize in patterns that can be observed in EEG recordings (eg, Theta or Beta oscillations). So, while the science is conflicting and not settled there is plenty o…

I once read that this effect with binaural beats only works with traditional electromagnetic headphones and doesn't appear when the kind of acoustic headphones used in MRI machines are used, but I can't for the life of me find a source on that. Any idea if this is true?

Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#76

I’ve always been bad at telling stories. Listeners would more likely fall asleep in sync than have their hearts racing. HN have any tips, tricks, books or blogs to help with story telling skills?

Circle around a punchline until you're done with your story or the audience is bored

It doesn't matter if you were boring or not if you end on a laugh, people remember the laugh

You're also allowed to write and rehearse your stories in advance :)

Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#77

> This correlation of heart rates, described this month in Cell Reports, could one day lead to new tools for measuring attentiveness, both in the classroom and the clinic. Shame such interesting science inspires such dystopian machinations. "People synchronize their bodies when absorbed in attention." --> "How can schools use this to make sure students are paying attention?" Please don't.

It doesn't have to be so dystopian.

It could be used as a way to detect when your audience loses attention and needs a break.

Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#78

> This correlation of heart rates, described this month in Cell Reports, could one day lead to new tools for measuring attentiveness, both in the classroom and the clinic. Shame such interesting science inspires such dystopian machinations. "People synchronize their bodies when absorbed in attention." --> "How can schools use this to make sure students are paying attention?" Please don't.

Synchronising happens all the time! Not only with people, even with animals, and even pendulum clocks on rollers.

We clap along together to the beat of songs, and the physical movement causes our heartbeat to change and therefore synchronise. Sharing that experience is a good thing!

When walking around the local supermarket, I noticed that everyone was walking in-step. Then I took off my headphones, and noticed that they were following the beat of the piped music in the background. It was much easier to navigate the store without conflict or bumping into people, because we had that shared clock signal.

Could background music, or even something more simple like a ticking clock, make people more synchronised with each other? I think it could be a good thing.

Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#79

> This correlation of heart rates, described this month in Cell Reports, could one day lead to new tools for measuring attentiveness, both in the classroom and the clinic. Shame such interesting science inspires such dystopian machinations. "People synchronize their bodies when absorbed in attention." --> "How can schools use this to make sure students are paying attention?" Please don't.

It doesn't have to be so dystopian. It could be used as a way to detect when your audience loses attention and needs a break.

[deleted]

Re: When listeners pay attention to stories, their heart rates rise and fall in sync

#80

> This correlation of heart rates, described this month in Cell Reports, could one day lead to new tools for measuring attentiveness, both in the classroom and the clinic. Shame such interesting science inspires such dystopian machinations. "People synchronize their bodies when absorbed in attention." --> "How can schools use this to make sure students are paying attention?" Please don't.

I'm reminded of Snow Crash:

Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo...

Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.

(Text copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067951 . Neat that googling for the quote brought me right back to HN.)

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