ReviewDevelopmental cognitive neuroscience2025
Caregiver-child neural synchrony: Magic, mirage, or developmental mechanism?
Review in Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Parents' neural dynamics in response to their children's speech.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Synchronizing brains and hearts: A practical guide for caregiver-child fNIRS-ECG multimodal hyperscanning.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Enhanced word learning and neural synchrony during children's storytelling.NPJ science of learning · 2026Article
- Maternal technoference decreases brain-to-brain synchrony during mother-infant interaction.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Considerations for conducting developmental neuroimaging research on mental health topics.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- A developmental framework of interpersonal neural synchrony.Developmental review : DR · 2025Article
- In sync through laughter? An fNIRS hyperscanning study on neural synchrony and social connection.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Young children transition in and out of synchronous states with their caregivers across physiology, behavior, and brain activity, but what do these synchronous periods mean? One body of two-brain studies using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) finds that individual, family, and moment-to-moment behavioral and contextual factors are associated with caregiver-child neural synchrony, while another body of literature finds that neural synchrony is associated with positive child outcomes. Taken together, it is tempting to conclude that caregiver-child neural synchrony may act as a foundational developmental mechanism linking children's experiences to their healthy development, but many questions remain. In this review, we synthesize recent findings and open questions from caregiver-child studies using fNIRS, which is uniquely well suited for use with caregivers and children, but also laden with unique constraints. Throughout, we highlight open questions alongside best practices for optimizing two-brain fNIRS to examine hypothesized developmental mechanisms. We particularly emphasize the need to consider immediate and global stressors as context for interpretation of neural synchrony findings, and the need for full inclusion of socioeconomically and racially diverse families in future studies.
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Registered trials
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.