Have you ever been so laser focused on a task—playing a video game, reading an engrossing book, and so on—that when you look up, hours have suddenly gone by? This is commonly referred to as flow state: a state of absorbed concentration and a distorted sense of time. Studies have shown that working in the flow state has a positive impact on happiness and productivity.
A new Caltech-led study examines the phenomenon of “team flow,” where individuals work in a flow state with others. Like a fingerprint, the electrical activity of the brain looks different from person to person, including during a flow state (team or solo). By measuring the brainwaves of volunteers as they played a collaborative video game, the researchers discovered that people whose neural patterns or “neural traits” looked similar were able to more easily achieve a team flow state together.
The research is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.