Affective or cognitive interpersonal emotion regulation in couples: an fNIRS hyperscanning study

Abstract

Sadness regulation is crucial for maintaining the romantic relationships of couples. Interpersonal emotion regulation, including affective engagement (AE) and cognitive engagement (CE), activates social brain networks. However, it is unclear how AE and CE regulate sadness in couples through affective bonds. We recruited 30 heterosexual couple dyads and 30 heterosexual stranger dyads and collected functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning data while each dyad watched sad or neutral videos and while the regulator regulated the target’s sadness. Then, we characterized interbrain synchronization (IBS) and Granger causality (GC). The results indicated that AE and CE were more effective for couples than for strangers and that sadness evaluation of female targets was lower than that of male targets. CE-induced IBS at CH13 (BA10, right middle frontal gyrus) was lower for female targets than for male targets, while no gender difference in AE was detected. GC change at CH13 during CE was lower in the sad condition for male targets than for female targets, while no gender difference in AE was discovered. These observations suggest that AE and CE activate affective bonds but that CE was more effective for regulating sadness in female targets, revealing different neural patterns of cognitive and affective sadness regulation in couples.

Increased Interpersonal Brain Synchronization in Romantic Couples Is Associated with Higher Honesty: An fNIRS Hyperscanning Study

“…Affective bonds of romantic couples are based on mutual trust and disclosure, which reduce the need and motivation for deception. Couples with strong affective bonds tend to share more information with each other and expect their partners to do the same [85].…”

Neurophysiological markers of asymmetric emotional contagion: implications for organizational contexts

“…Similar results were obtained in another fNIRS study, which tested romantic couples during a cooperation task ( Pan et al, 2017 ), revealing a stronger directional coupling in the superior frontal cortices from females to males than vice versa. Conversely, Zhang and colleagues ( Zhang et al, 2023 ) found stronger male-driven inter-brain synchronization during interpersonal emotion regulation when males used cognitive engagement as a strategy. Overall, as in the case of physiological contagion ( Thomsen and Gilbert, 1998 ; Ferrer and Helm, 2013 ; Helm et al, 2014 ), data from studies using neural measures indicate the presence of delayed synchronization of brain states between romantic partners, which can flow from either the male to the female or vice versa.…”

When “more for others, less for self” leads to co‐benefits: A tri‐MRI dyad‐hyperscanning study

“…Hyperscanning, the methodology to measure two or multiple brains simultaneously and to investigate the intra and inter‐brain neural dynamics (Czeszumski et al., 2020; Hari & Kujala, 2009; Scholkmann et al., 2013), has gained traction in recent decades (Babiloni & Astolfi, 2014; Misaki et al., 2021; Nam et al., 2020). Multiple research tools have joined the hyperscanning arena, including fMRI (Koike et al., 2019; Miyata et al., 2021; Yoshioka et al., 2021), magnetoencephalography (MEG) (Holmes et al., 2023; Mayseless et al., 2019), electroencephalography (EEG) (Haresign et al., 2022; Turk et al., 2022), and functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) (Nguyen et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2023), with the plethora of analysis methods (Hakim et al., 2023) that widened our understanding of these ubiquitous social interaction contexts, such as stranger groups (Guglielmini et al., 2022), lovers (Long et al., 2023; Pan et al., 2017), parent–children (Miller et al., 2019; Nguyen et al., 2020; Reindl et al., 2018), dueting musicians (Gugnowska et al., 2022; Müller & Lindenberger, 2022), teacher–students (Barreto et al., 2021), and even patient–clinicians (Ellingsen et al., 2023). Despite some cautionary notes (Burgess, 2013; Hamilton, 2021; Holroyd, 2022), these burgeoning endeavors will undoubtedly continue to thrive in (or beyond) social neuroscience.…”