What distinguishes real-world communities from their online counterparts? Social and cognitive neuroscience research on social networks and collective intentionality will be used in the article to answer this question. Physical communities are born in places. And places engage "we-mode" neurobiological and cognitive processes as behavioral synchrony, shared attention, deliberate attunement, interbrain synchronization, and so on, which create coherent social networks of very different individuals who are supported by a "wisdom of crowd." Digital technologies remove physical boundaries, giving people more freedom to choose their activities and groups. At the same time, however, the lack of physical co-presence of community members significantly reduces their possibility of activating "we-mode" cognitive processes and social motivation. Because of this, unlike physical communities that allow interaction between people from varied origins and stories, digital communities are always made up of people who have the same interests and knowledge (communities of practice). This new situation disrupts the "wisdom of crowd," making the community more radical and less accurate (polarization effect), allowing influential users to wield disproportionate influence over the group's beliefs, and producing inequalities in the distribution of social capital. However, a new emergent technology-the Metaverse-has the potential to reverse this trend. Several studies have revealed that virtual and augmented reality-the major technologies underlying the Metaverse-can engage the same neurobiological and cognitive "we-mode" processes as real-world environments. If the many flaws in this technology are fixed, it might encourage people to engage in more meaningful and constructive interactions in online communities.

中文翻译：

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寻找虚拟宇宙：物理和数字社区的神经科学。

现实世界的社区与在线社区有何不同？本文将利用有关社交网络和集体意向性的社会和认知神经科学研究来回答这个问题。物质社区诞生于地方。地方参与了“我们模式”的神经生物学和认知过程，如行为同步、共同关注、刻意协调、脑间同步等，这些过程为截然不同的个体创建了连贯的社交网络，这些个体得到了“群体智慧”的支持。数字技术消除了物理界限，让人们更自由地选择自己的活动和群体。然而，与此同时，社区成员缺乏实际的共同存在大大降低了他们激活“我们模式”认知过程和社会动机的可能性。因此，与允许来自不同来源和故事的人们之间进行互动的物理社区不同，数字社区始终由具有相同兴趣和知识的人组成（实践社区）。这种新情况扰乱了“群体的智慧”，使社区变得更加激进和不那么准确（极化效应），让有影响力的用户对群体的信仰产生不成比例的影响，并造成社会资本分配的不平等。然而，一种新兴技术——元宇宙——有可能扭转这一趋势。多项研究表明，虚拟现实和增强现实（元宇宙的主要技术）可以参与与现实世界环境相同的神经生物学和认知“我们模式”过程。如果这项技术的许多缺陷得到解决，它可能会鼓励人们在在线社区中进行更有意义和建设性的互动。