Hyperfeedback: Syncing brains to improve human interaction

Humans are social beings. As such, we are constantly interacting with each other, either directly or through media. Research has shown that our brains synchronize when we interact with each other. Even more, some studies have shown that greater synchrony in measured brain signals is associated with improved social parameters and functioning. For example, those people who exhibited higher inter-brain synchrony with each other performed better in a cooperation task. In observational learning settings, they learned better from each other and also reported greater connectedness to each other. Some researchers have suggested that mental disorders and psychiatric illnesses are associated with impaired social skills, particularly with the ability to connect and interact well with others. In this project, we want to see if we can improve the interaction between two people by increasing the synchrony between their brains using neurofeedback. Neurofeedback is an established method of training the brain. Participants are presented with their ongoing brain activity, which allows them to learn to modulate and change their own brain activity. In this project, we will use a non-invasive brain imaging technology, namely functional near- infrared spectroscopy, to develop a novel neurofeedback approach to train synchrony between two brains. This means that we measure the brains of two people at the same time, determine their synchrony in real time, and feed back information about the ongoing brain synchrony back to them. The two people then train together to synchronize their brain activity. The first goal of this project is to establish the technical basis for such a novel system. We will investigate to what extent two subjects can jointly regulate their brain activity and which mental strategies are suitable for this purpose. After having established this new approach, we will investigate to what extent the regulation of inter-brain synchrony leads to an improvement in their interaction. Such a novel neurofeedback system for enhancing inter-brain synchrony could potentially improve cooperation, interaction, learning, and mutual understanding. It might also open up new clinical opportunities by, for example, promoting the synchronization of patients and therapists, or by improving impaired social skills in health and disease.