ArticleeNeuro
Experience-Dependent Counselor-Client Brain Synchronization during Psychological Counseling.
Article in eNeuro. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Self and Its Intersubjective Synchrony in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Review.Clinical psychology & psychotherapyPooled it
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- Neural mechanisms during role-playing in music psychodrama: an fNIRS Hyperscanning study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Neural Mechanisms of Role Reversal in Improvisational Music Psychodrama: An fNIRS Hyperscanning Study.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Minding the moving self: the centrality of body movement in the neurodynamics of the self and psychotherapeutic implications.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- Neurophysiological markers of asymmetric emotional contagion: implications for organizational contexts.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2024Review
- Physiological and neural synchrony in emotional and neutral stimulus processing: A study protocol.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Right brain-to-right brain psychotherapy: recent scientific and clinical advances.Annals of general psychiatry · 2022Review
- Combinatorial approaches for treating neuropsychiatric social impairment.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Inter-brain plasticity as a biological mechanism of change in psychotherapy: A review and integrative model.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Review
- Emotion-Attention Interaction in the Right Hemisphere.Brain sciences · 2021Review
- The Interpersonal Neurobiology of Intersubjectivity.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Application of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Evidence-Based Psychotherapy.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The role of the counselor's experience in building an alliance with the clients remains controversial. Recently, the expanding nascent studies on interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) on human subjects have hinted at the possible neural substrates underlying the relationship qualities between the counselor-client dyads. Our study assessed the clients' self-report working alliance (WA) as well as simultaneously measured IBS by fNIRS in 14 experienced versus 16 novice counselor-client dyads during the first integrative-orientation psychological counseling session. We observed that synchronous brain activity patterns were elicited from the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) across counselor-client dyads. Furthermore, such IBS, together with alliance quality, was especially evident when counselors had more psychotherapy experience. Time-lagged counselor-client brain synchronization might co-vary with the alliance (goal component) when the client's brain activity preceded that of the counselor. These findings favor the notion that the IBS between counselor-client associated with the WA is an experience-dependent phenomenon, suggesting that a potential adaptive mechanism is embedded in psychological counseling.
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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.