Interpersonal Synchrony in the Social World: Neuropsychological, Psychological and Neurobiological Mechanisms

Our daily life is filled with social interactions, such as verbal/nonverbal communication, interactive learning, or interpersonal cooperation, which involve varying degrees of person-to-person synchronizes, e.g. the behavior consistencies (temporal/spatial) among individuals. Interpersonal synchrony is socially important and plays a central role in establishing and promoting social cohesion. One open question in the field is what the neural substrate of interpersonal synchrony is and how it affects collective performance. In recent years, the two-person approach—a new, powerful tool to study information exchange and social behaviors—is developed aiming to characterize the behavioral dynamics and neural mechanisms of real-time social interactions. By using the technique known as “Hyper-scanning”, i.e., simultaneously recording brain activities (using fMRI, EEG, or fNIRS) from the interacting individuals, researchers have revealed that when two persons are behaving in a synchronized way, their brain activities are at the same time coupled, demonstrating the inter-brain synchrony.

Notwithstanding, several important gaps remain in the field. Social interaction, by definition, involves at least two individuals situating in a naturalistic environment. However, conventional investigations of social interaction are constrained by ecologically-deprived settings, which only allow focusing on individuals alone. Hence, it is imperative to develop new paradigms and approaches to study interpersonal synchrony in real-world social interactions, with high ecological validity. Further, it is still unclear whether and how the inter-brain synchrony (or physiological synchrony) reflects the substance of human interacting behaviors. The relationship among the behavioral synchrony, inter-brain synchrony and physiological synchrony remains to be explored.

The goal of this Research Topic is to present neuropsychological, psychological and neurobiological mechanisms of interpersonal synchrony. Topics include but are not restricted to:
- Innovative brain imaging methods for investigating or measuring synchronous behaviors under social settings.
- The dynamics of inter-brain synchrony and/or physiological synchrony underlying human interacting behaviors in various fields (such as communication, coordination, education, and management) revealed by hyper scanning technique.
- The relationship among the behavior synchrony, brain-to-brain synchrony and physiological synchrony.

Studies for healthy people and people with neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism, mood disorders, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, etc are welcome.