Abstract
The recent decade has seen a shift from artificial and environmentally deprived experiments in neuroscience to real-life studies on multiple brains in interaction, coordination and synchrony. In these new interpersonal synchrony experiments, there has been a growing trend to employ naturalistic social interactions to evaluate mechanisms underlying synchronous neuronal communication. Here, we emphasize the importance of integrating the assessment of neural synchrony with measurement of nonverbal behavioral synchrony as expressed in various social contexts: relaxed social interactions, planning a joint pleasurable activity, conflict discussion, invocation of trauma, or support giving and assess the integration of neural and behavioral synchrony across developmental stages and psychopathological conditions. We also showcase the advantages of magnetoencephalography neuroimaging as a promising tool for studying interactive neural synchrony and consider the challenge of ecological validity at the expense of experimental rigor. We review recent evidence of rhythmic information flow between brains in interaction and conclude with addressing state-of-the-art developments that may contribute to advance research on brain-to-brain coordination to the next level.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 143-152 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 1-2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 18 Jan 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2020 The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press.
Funding
The work was supported by the Academy of Finland Research Fellowfunding and a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation to J.L., and by grants to R.F. from the Irving B. Harris Foundation and the Simms/Mann Foundations.
Funders | Funder number |
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Simms/Mann Foundations | |
Brain and Behavior Research Foundation | |
National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression | |
Academy of Finland |
Keywords
- Ecological validity
- MEG
- Neural synchrony
- Social interaction
- Social neuroscience