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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Pain Res.
Sec. Non-Pharmacological Treatment of Pain
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpain.2025.1463321
This article is part of the Research Topic Non-biomedical Perspectives on Pain and its Prevention and Management – Volume II View all articles

Healing synchrony? Potential Benefits of Interpersonal Synchrony for Chronic Pain Management

Provisionally accepted
Justyna Świdrak Justyna Świdrak 1,2*
  • 1 August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain
  • 2 Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Masovian, Poland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Fibromyalgia is called a pathology of misconnection at the neurophysiological, psychological, and social levels, and is characterised by widespread musculoskeletal pain, which is accompanied by a series of symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, body perception disturbances, and cognitive deficits. In this article, I argue that interventions that in various ways enhance interpersonal neural synchronisation (INS) may bring long-term benefits to people with fibromyalgia (PwF). In the first part, I briefly introduce studies on INS in the general population. In the second part, I hypothesise that interpersonal synchrony may contribute to symptom reduction for individuals with fibromyalgia, in the sense that repeated experience of being in sync with others may play a role in restoring both the brain-body and self-others connection in this population and consequently result in simultaneous lasting improvement of wellbeing. In the final part, I discuss potential future research directions.

    Keywords: Fibromyalgia, Bodily self, Chronic Pain Management, interpersonal neural synchrony, Interbrain coherence

    Received: 11 Jul 2024; Accepted: 14 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Świdrak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Justyna Świdrak, August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.