Multimodal hyperscanning reveals that synchrony of body and mind are distinct in mother-child dyads

Vanessa Reindl; Sam Wass; Victoria Leong; Wolfgang Scharke; Sandra Wistuba; Christina Lisa Wirth; Kerstin Konrad; Christian Gerloff

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.118982

Multimodal hyperscanning reveals that synchrony of body and mind are distinct in mother-child dyads

Neuroimage. 2022 May 1:251:118982. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.118982. Epub 2022 Feb 8.

Authors

Vanessa Reindl¹, Sam Wass², Victoria Leong³, Wolfgang Scharke⁴, Sandra Wistuba⁵, Christina Lisa Wirth⁵, Kerstin Konrad⁶, Christian Gerloff⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Child Neuropsychology Section, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Germany; JARA-Brain Institute II, Molecular Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, RWTH Aachen & Research Centre Juelich, Germany; Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore S639818, Republic of Singapore. Electronic address: vreindl@ukaachen.de.
² Division of Psychology, University of East London, London E16 2RD, United Kingdom.
³ Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore S639818, Republic of Singapore; Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, United Kingdom.
⁴ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Child Neuropsychology Section, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Germany; Chair of Cognitive and Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
⁵ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Child Neuropsychology Section, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
⁶ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Child Neuropsychology Section, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Germany; JARA-Brain Institute II, Molecular Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, RWTH Aachen & Research Centre Juelich, Germany.
⁷ Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Child Neuropsychology Section, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Germany; JARA-Brain Institute II, Molecular Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, RWTH Aachen & Research Centre Juelich, Germany; Chair II of Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences, RWTH Aachen University, Germany.

PMID: 35149229
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.118982

Abstract

Hyperscanning studies have begun to unravel the brain mechanisms underlying social interaction, indicating a functional role for interpersonal neural synchronization (INS), yet the mechanisms that drive INS are poorly understood. The current study, thus, addresses whether INS is functionally-distinct from synchrony in other systems - specifically the autonomic nervous system and motor behavior. To test this, we used concurrent functional near-infrared spectroscopy - electrocardiography recordings, while N = 34 mother-child and stranger-child dyads engaged in cooperative and competitive tasks. Only in the neural domain was a higher synchrony for mother-child compared to stranger-child dyads observed. Further, autonomic nervous system and neural synchrony were positively related during competition but not during cooperation. These results suggest that synchrony in different behavioral and biological systems may reflect distinct processes. Furthermore, they show that increased mother-child INS is unlikely to be explained solely by shared arousal and behavioral similarities, supporting recent theories that postulate that INS is higher in close relationships.

Keywords: Electrocardiography; Functional near-infrared spectroscopy; Hyperscanning; Interpersonal synchrony; Multimodal imaging.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Brain / physiology
Brain Mapping*
Cooperative Behavior
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Mother-Child Relations
Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared*