This study investigated the gender differences in deception and their neural basis in the perspective of two‐person neuroscience. Both male and female dyads were asked to perform a face‐to‐face spontaneous sender–receiver deception task, while their neural activities in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and right temporal parietal junction (rTPJ) were recorded simultaneously using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)‐based hyperscanning. Male and female dyads displayed similar deception rate, successful deception rate, and eye contact in deception trials. Moreover, eye contact in deception trials was positively correlated with the success rate of deception in both genders. The fNIRS data showed that the interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in PFC was significantly enhanced only in female dyads when performed the deception task, while INS in rTPJ was increased only in male dyads. Such INS was correlated with the success rate of deception in both dyads. Granger causality analysis showed that no significant directionality between time series of PFC (or rTPJ) in each dyad, which could indicate that sender and receiver played equally important role during deception task. Finally, enhanced INS in PFC in female dyads mediated the contribution of eye contact to the success rate of deception. All findings in this study suggest that differential patterns of INS are recruited when male and female dyads perform the face‐to‐face deception task. To our knowledge, this is the first interbrain evidence for gender difference of successful deception, which could make us a deeper understanding of spontaneous face‐to‐face deception.

Experiencing positive emotions together facilitates interpersonal understanding and promotes subsequent social interaction among individuals. However, the neural underpinnings of such emotional-social effect remain to be discovered. The current study employed the functional near-infrared spectroscopy–based hyperscanning to investigate the abovementioned relationship. After participants in dyad watched movie clips with happily or neutral emotion, they were asked to perform the interpersonal cooperative task, with their neural activation of prefrontal cortex being recorded simultaneously via functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results suggested that compared with the neutral movie watching together, a higher interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in left inferior frontal gyrus during participant dyads watching happiness movie together was observed. Subsequently, dyads in happiness showed more effective coordination interaction during the interpersonal cooperation task compared to those in the neutral condition, and such facilitated effect was associated with increased cooperation-related INS at left middle frontal cortex. A mediation analysis showed that the coordination interaction fully mediated the relationship between the emotion-induced INS during the happiness movie-viewing and the cooperation-related INS in interpersonal cooperation. Taken together, our findings suggest that the faciliatory effect experiencing happiness together has on interpersonal cooperation can be reliably reflected by the INS magnitude at the brain level.

The contents of visual working memory (VWM) have been repeatedly found to be linked with attention allocation during visual searching. While the target representation in working memory (target template) was found to affect memory-driven attentional capture in a top-down manner, non-target representation in working memory (non-target template) can also affect attentional selection. The present article reviews existing literature on the modulation of attentional selection by non-target template stored in visual working memory. It is concluded that non-target presentations can not only automatically bias attention to information that matches the non-target template, but also benefit visual search performance by strategically suppressing items that matches the non-target template. The suppression functions of non-target template were affected by several factors including experiment paradigm, task difficulty, characteristics of stimuli and level of cognitive control. Future research should be aimed towards further investigation of its properties and promote both basic and applied research.

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Opportunities to persuade and be persuaded are ubiquitous. What interpersonal neural pathway in real-world settings determining successful information propagation in naturalistic two-person persuasion scenarios? Hereby, we extended prior research on a naturalistic dyadic persuasion paradigm (NDP) using dual-fNIRS protocol simultaneously measured the neural activity from persuader-receiver dyads while they engaged in a modified “Arctic Survival Task.” Investigating whether neural coupling between persuaders and receivers underpinning of persuading and predict persuasion outcomes (i.e., receiver’s compliance). Broadly, we indicated that the persuasive arguments increase neural coupling significantly compared to non-persuasive arguments in the left superior temporal gyrus-superior frontal gyrus and superior frontal gyrus-inferior frontal gyrus. G-causality indices further revealed the coupling directionality of information flows between the persuader and receiver. Critically, the neural coupling could be a better predictor of persuasion outcomes relative to traditional self-report measures. Eventually, temporal dynamics neural coupling incorporating video recording revealed neural coupling marked the micro-level processes in response to persuading messages and possibly reflecting the time that persuasion might occurs. The initial case of the arguments with targeted views is valuable as the first step in encouraging the receiver’s compliance. Our investigation represented an innovative interpersonal approach toward comprehending the neuroscience and psychology underlying complex and true persuasion.