ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Brain-to-brain coupling during handholding is associated with pain reduction.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 121 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
121 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 312 citations in OpenAlex.
- Recent Trends in Non-invasive Neural Recording Based Brain-to-Brain Synchrony Analysis on Multidisciplinary Human Interactions for Understanding Brain Dynamics: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Social Support and Cognition: A Systematic Review.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Chronic pain patients low in social connectedness report higher pain and need deeper pressure for pain relief.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2023Trial
- Mortality threat mitigates interpersonal competition: an EEG-based hyperscanning study.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2021Trial
- Oxytocin enhances the pain-relieving effects of social support in romantic couples.Human brain mapping · 2019Trial
- Inter-brain coupling tracks emotional co-regulation.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Social Physiology: Human homeostasis is more efficient in social proximity.Science advances · 2026Article
- Empathy for pain persists across live two-way video interactions and viewing of prerecorded videos.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Do partner handholding effects linger? Order effects of handholding support on mechanical hypersensitivity in women.Pain reports · 2026Article
- Brain-to-Brain Coupling Is Associated With the Benefits of Delayed Imitation in Skill Acquisition: An fNIRS Study.Brain and behavior · 2026Article
- Synchronizing brains and hearts: A practical guide for caregiver-child fNIRS-ECG multimodal hyperscanning.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Relational Memory Reconsolidation: A New Lens on Change Mechanisms in EFT for Couples.Family process · 2026Review
- EEG hyperscanning reveals dynamic interbrain network patterns during interactive social decision-making.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Temporal synchrony and spatial similarity of interbrain subnetworks predict dyadic social interaction.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Through Massage to the Brain-Neuronal and Neuroplastic Mechanisms of Massage Based on Various Neuroimaging Techniques (EEG, fMRI, and fNIRS).Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Experience-dependent maturation of somatosensory parvalbumin interneurons during social development in prairie voles.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- The Role of Different Thoughts in Tacit Coordination and Its Malleability by Interventions.Journal of cognition · 2026Article
- Self-organization and circular causation as synergetic foundations of social interaction: a multilayer network perspective.Frontiers in network physiology · 2026Article
- An fNIRS hyperscanning dataset on the modulation of synchrony by social relationship during social touch.Scientific data · 2025Article
61 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The mechanisms underlying analgesia related to social touch are not clear. While recent research highlights the role of the empathy of the observer to pain relief in the target, the contribution of social interaction to analgesia is unknown. The current study examines brain-to-brain coupling during pain with interpersonal touch and tests the involvement of interbrain synchrony in pain alleviation. Romantic partners were assigned the roles of target (pain receiver) and observer (pain observer) under pain-no-pain and touch-no-touch conditions concurrent with EEG recording. Brain-to-brain coupling in alpha-mu band (8-12 Hz) was estimated by a three-step multilevel analysis procedure based on running window circular correlation coefficient and post hoc power of the findings was calculated using simulations. Our findings indicate that hand-holding during pain administration increases brain-to-brain coupling in a network that mainly involves the central regions of the pain target and the right hemisphere of the pain observer. Moreover, brain-to-brain coupling in this network was found to correlate with analgesia magnitude and observer's empathic accuracy. These findings indicate that brain-to-brain coupling may be involved in touch-related analgesia.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.