Biology subjects

Nobriga, G.

Publications and source records attributed to Nobriga, G..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Social attention and coordinated movement produce dissociable spectral and network changes during dyadic improvisational dance

Dance is increasingly delivered as an intervention for social and affective functioning, but a live dyadic encounter confounds several distinct ingredients - social attention, verbal engagement, coordinated movement, and in-the-moment generation - so its neural effects cannot be assigned to any one of them. We recorded dual-brain mobile EEG from adult human participants of both sexes (16 female, 2 male) and a dance instructor across six five-minute conditions that vary these ingredients independently: solitary rest, direct eye gaze, conversation, teacher-led and participant-led mirroring, and free improvisation, with concurrent head-mounted accelerometry. Referencing each condition to eye gaze - socially engaging but nearly motionless - rather than to solitary rest partitioned the response. The components proved dissociable. Nonverbal social attention alone reorganized the power spectrum, flattening the aperiodic exponent (g = -0.97) and desynchronizing alpha-band oscillations (g = -0.90), while leaving inter-regional connectivity unchanged (amplitude g = +0.15; phase g = +0.11). Verbal engagement added high-frequency amplitude coupling (g = +2.61) without further spectral change. Coordinated movement added a decrease in theta/alpha coupling involving the frontoparietal-control network (g = -0.59), the signature of an externally directed state, alongside a further spectral shift (g = -0.61). Movement-vigor covariates, corticokinematic coherence, and aperiodic-adjusted power indicated that the spectral effects were cortical rather than myogenic. Four weeks of improvisational dance training increased empathic responsiveness to others' distress relative to a movie control (g = 0.82). Coordinated social movement thus acts on the brain componentially, with mutual attention rather than motor load establishing the engaged state.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Amplitude without phase: interpersonal movement coordination grades inter-brain coupling

Interpersonal movement coordination is a foundational feature of human sociality, scaffolding communication, affiliation, and joint action from infancy onward. Whether this behavioral coupling is accompanied by genuine coupling between brains, rather than one manufactured by shared sensory input or motion artifact, has proven difficult to establish. We recorded dual-brain EEG with synchronized head-mounted accelerometry from participant-partner dyads (16 dyads, 155 dyad-condition recordings) across six conditions grading interpersonal coordination from stillness to fully reciprocal joint movement, using improvisational dance to elicit sustained, naturalistic, gradable coordination. Windowed cross-correlation confirmed graded, partner-specific movement coordination, including a lead-lag signature that reversed with who led. Against a pseudo-dyad surrogate, inter-brain synchrony took one specific form: amplitude-envelope coupling in the high-beta and gamma bands, robust to a leakage-corrected measure, with no phase-based or slow-band coupling. Within dyads, movement synchrony predicted the strength of this amplitude coupling (standardized beta = 0.54 in gamma), an association that strengthened monotonically with frequency, held under a dyad fixed-effects estimator, and was undiminished when the amount of movement was entered into the model. Movement synchrony and inter-brain coupling also co-fluctuated within interactions, above surrogate. Two control analyses excluded the leading alternatives: the coupling was not sensorimotor rhythm-tracking, since corticokinematic coherence was present but non-localized and not movement-selective, and not a shared movement-frequency rhythm linking the brains. These results identify interpersonal movement coordination as an organizing variable for inter-brain coupling and specify that coupling as fast-band amplitude co-modulation, not phase synchrony. Brains couple when bodies coordinate, not when they merely move together.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

The Choreography of Coupled Brains: Coordinated Movement and Multi-Scale Neural Synchrony in Musical Theater for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities

Performing together, which demands moving, singing, and coordinating in real time, is among the most social things people do, yet whether such coordination synchronizes not only behavior but brain activity, within and between performers, has rarely been examined during genuine performance. In this pilot study, we used mobile electroencephalography, including dual-brain hyperscanning of co-performing partners, to resolve neural change over a 16-week musical-theater program in adolescents and adults with developmental disabilities, the majority autistic. We examined four levels: behavior, spectral power, within-brain (source-space) connectivity, and between-brain synchrony, framing all estimates as effect sizes. Anxiety decreased from pre- to post-intervention, consistently across participant and parent reports. During performance, high-beta and gamma power and within-brain amplitude connectivity rose broadly across the cortex, with maximal effects seen in parieto-occipital regions. Between-brain coupling was similarly carried by amplitude co-fluctuation rather than phase; however, it was graded by the degree of interpersonal movement coordination (strongest when partners mirrored one another) and scaled with movement vigor. Local and within-brain changes were thus broad and state-like, whereas coupling between brains was specific to interpersonal coordination. Coordinated movement may organize neural synchrony across scales, positioning musical theater as a tractable model for studying the social brain in motion.

neuroscience↗