Neural synchrony

<p>Neural synchrony is the correlation of <a href="/facts/Brain_activity/XGvpcBl5">brain activity</a> across two or more people over time. In <a href="/facts/Social_neuroscience/ufrxbKW4">social</a> and <a href="/facts/Affective_neuroscience/tVvuRgHb">affective neuroscience</a>, neural synchrony specifically refers to the degree of similarity between the spatio-temporal neural fluctuations of multiple people. This phenomenon represents the convergence and coupling of different people's <a href="/facts/Neurocognitive/0hEmydea">neurocognitive</a> systems, and it is thought to be the neural substrate for many forms of interpersonal dynamics and shared experiences. Some research also refers to neural synchrony as inter-brain synchrony, brain-to-brain coupling, inter-subject correlation, between-brain connectivity, or neural coupling. In the current literature, neural synchrony is notably distinct from intra-brain synchrony—sometimes also called neural synchrony—which denotes the coupling of activity across regions of a single individual's brain.
</p><p>Neural synchrony approaches represent an important theoretical and <a href="/facts/Methodological/dk5X9Hxx">methodological</a> contribution to the field. Since its conception, studies of neural synchrony have helped elucidate the mechanisms underlying <a href="/facts/Social_phenomena/bTETk75b">social phenomena</a>, including communication, narrative processing, coordination, and cooperation. By emphasizing the social dynamics of the brain, this area of research has played a critical role in making neuroscience more attuned to people's social proclivities—a perspective that is often lost on individual-level approaches to understanding the brain.
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Neural synchrony open-in-new

Neural synchrony