ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2026
Positive interactions and active mentalizing facilitate inter-brain synchronization in couples.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
High-quality interactions rely on socio-cognitive abilities, which help partners understand and respond to one another. Hyperscanning, which measures brain activity in multiple individuals simultaneously, can examine inter-brain synchronization as a possible signature of social coordination. In this study, we explore this synchronization during natural, everyday interactions in romantic couples. Forty-two dyads participated in a naturalistic behavioral paradigm while electroencephalography was recorded. We measured behavioral dyadic reciprocity and negative states, and computed inter-brain synchronization using the circular correlation coefficient (CCorr) across multiple frequency bands (theta [4-8 Hz], alpha [8-13 Hz], and beta [14-31 Hz]). Positive interactions elicited greater dyadic reciprocity and fewer negative states compared to negative interactions. At the neural level, inter-brain synchronization in the beta band was significantly higher during positive compared to negative interactions. Mentalizing compared to counting elicited increased inter-brain synchronization in both alpha and beta bands, indicating that active sociocognitive processing enhances neural alignment between partners. These findings demonstrate that inter-brain dynamics provide a neural signature of both interaction valence and mentalizing engagement during real-world social interactions, putting forward inter-brain synchronization as a sensitive marker of sociocognitive coordination.
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