{"id":2865,"date":"2020-12-03T05:02:46","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T10:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.law.temple.edu\/aer\/?p=2865"},"modified":"2021-12-16T14:56:31","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T14:56:31","slug":"a-couples-only-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.temple.edu\/aer\/2020\/12\/03\/a-couples-only-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"BRAIN LESSONS: A COUPLES-ONLY DANCE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have all seen it.\u00a0 We have all seen the lawyer or the student so involved with her notes or his script that they seem to have uncoupled from the courtroom itself.\u00a0 I take that moment to study the faces of the jury.\u00a0 What are they doing while the scribe at the podium has a private waltz with his scribblings?\u00a0 In most instances, I see that the jury has also uncoupled.\u00a0 Cognitive science has shown that the advocate here has not simply made a misstep with her dancing partner, but has missed the opportunity for the most amazing kind of dance: a cognitive coupling.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a>\u00a0 A brain waltz taking place between two or more people.<\/p>\n<p>The brain science behind \u201ccognitive coupling\u201d has been around for more than a decade, but the phenomenon might be new to you and is almost certain to be new to your students or the other trial warriors you work with.\u00a0 Cognitive coupling is an electrical waltz between the brains of a speaker and listener\u2014a fascinating Rogers and Astaire unison of brain activity shared when two people are truly involved in that phenomenon we so dismissively call \u201ccommunication.\u201d\u00a0 Let us break down the science a little more from just one important study on the subject.<\/p>\n<p>To study brain activity in both a speaker and listener, researchers recorded a subject telling a story that was personal to her and told without direction.<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a>\u00a0 While her voice was recorded, researchers also recorded her brain activity by fMRI.\u00a0 This recorded story was then played for other subjects while their brains were being scanned by fMRI for processing activity.\u00a0 As a control, they had someone tell a story in Russian and played that story for English speakers who knew no Russian at all.\u00a0 I have spoiled the ending already, haven\u2019t I?\u00a0 The brain activity seen in the speaker, after a short processing delay, was <strong><em>mirrored<\/em><\/strong> in the listener.\u00a0 When non-Russian speakers listened to the Russian storyteller, there was none of this mirrored coupling at all.\u00a0 To tie up the loose ends that could account for the mirrored brain activity, the researchers had enough data to conclude that the speaker\u2019s brain activity was not the result of hearing herself speak her own story.<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It gets better though.\u00a0 The easier the communication was to understand, the delay between the speaker and listener\u2019s mirrored brain activity shortened toward synchronicity.\u00a0 Even better: When the listener could predict where the speaker was going, the <strong><em>listener\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> brain activity would \u201cpredict\u201d the brain activity of the speaker.\u00a0 The speaker\u2019s brain would then mirror the activity of the listener\u2019s \u201cprediction.\u201d\u00a0 Researchers next compared the brain activities of the various listeners in the study against one another and found that those, too, synced up in a marvelous dance.<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, why should this matter to trial lawyers or trial advocacy professors and students?\u00a0 It is the difference, as I see it, between communicating and communion.\u00a0 I can communicate and yet completely fail at communion\u2014the latter being quite simply defined as \u201csharing.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, the researchers concluded that the stronger the cognitive coupling activity between speaker and listener, \u201cthe better the understanding\u201d of the story being told.<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a>\u00a0 How beautiful!\u00a0 I often share the science of cognitive coupling with my students to refocus their goals in trial.\u00a0 It cannot all be about the words on the paper.\u00a0 It cannot be all about conveying the content we are certain will make or break our proof.\u00a0 Our goal should be a connection at the electrical level, where jury and advocate swing, and mirror, and move, and predict, and dance the dance\u2014all while opposing counsel sits and broods on the bleachers at the side of the gymnasium, wondering how he might cut in.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Also referred to as neural coupling or brain synchronization, among other similar names.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Greg J. Stephens et al., <em>Speaker-Listener Neural Coupling Underlies Successful Communication<\/em>, 107 Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, no. 32, 2010, at 14425, <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.1008662107\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.1008662107<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> <em>Id. <\/em>at 14427<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> <em>Id. <\/em>at 14426<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> <em>Id. <\/em>at 14427<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have all seen it.\u00a0 We have all seen the lawyer or the student so involved with her notes or his script that they seem to have uncoupled from the courtroom itself.\u00a0 I take that moment to study the faces of the jury.\u00a0 What are they doing while the scribe at the podium has a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"coauthors":[203],"class_list":["post-2865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brain-lessons","category-trial-advocacy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - 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