Being ‘in sync’—is interactional synchrony the key to understanding the social brain?

Abstract

The past couple of decades produced a surge of interest in interaction synchrony. Moving from the study of behavioral coordination to investigating the coordination of psychophysiological and brain activity, relevant research has tackled a broad range of interactional settings with a multitude of measurement and analysis tools. This method diversity produced a host of interesting results converging on the fact that individuals engaged in social exchange tend to temporally align external as well as internal processes. Moreover, there appears to be a reciprocal relationship between the individuals’ affective bond and the extent of synchronization, which together benefit interaction outcomes. Notably, however, the current breadth of study approaches creates challenges for the field including how to compare findings and how to develop a theoretical framework that unites and directs ongoing research efforts. More concerted efforts are called for to achieve the conceptual and methodological clarity needed to answer core questions and enabling a balanced pursuit of both synchronous and asynchronous processes.

Neuronal Coherence Agent for Shared Intentionality: A Hypothesis of Neurobiological Processes Occurring during Social Interaction

“…According to Schirmer et al [35], an increasing number of studies are being conducted on psychophysiological and brain activity coordination to measure interactional synchrony. These hyper-scanning research paradigms differ in whether they elicit intentional or unintentional synchronization.…”

“…These hyper-scanning research paradigms differ in whether they elicit intentional or unintentional synchronization. A few examples of the former are music composing or tapping, while passively observing others or engaging in conversation are examples of the latter [35]. These two paradigms demonstrate the integrated outcome of social interaction, including a spectrum of stimuli ranging from symbolic to physical interactions.…”

Simple Energy Balance or Microbiome for Childhood Obesity Prevention?

“…Influences during the perinatal, infancy, and early childhood periods, sometimes called developmental programming [ 42 ], appear to influence childhood obesity in ways other than simple energy balance [ 43 , 44 , 45 ], including in utero exposure to famine [ 46 ], maternal prenatal weight [ 45 ], breastfeeding [ 47 ], numerous in utero exposures [ 44 ], antibiotic use early in life [ 48 ], dietary sugar intake [ 49 ], dietary intake of ultra-processed foods [ 50 ], infection with Adenovirus 36 [ 51 , 52 , 53 ], exposure to endocrine disruptors (e.g., chemicals in plastic bottles) [ 54 ], air pollution [ 55 ], food allergies [ 56 ], dysfunctional reward system in the orbitofrontal cortex [ 57 , 58 ], and even traditional medicinal plants [ 59 ]. The biological mechanisms by which each of these possible initiation factors influence the trajectory toward obesity are not clearly known, but must work through interrelationships with complex energy balance mechanisms.…”

On the psychological origins of tool use

“…Such ambitious aims are increasingly plausible with the development of new methods for the study of behavior and cognition in natural contexts. Techniques such as motion tracking and EEG (Haar et al, 2020;Ladouce et al, 2019) are promising for the study of technological production, while methods for the study of interactional synchrony (Pan et al, 2020;Schirmer et al, 2021) offer insight into mechanisms of small-scale collaboration and social reproduction. At a larger scale, smartphonebased digital phenotyping methods (Onnela, 2021) might be adapted to study individual experience of and engagement with real world technological situations and institutions.…”