A Two-Person Neuroscience Approach for Social Anxiety: A Paradigm With Interbrain Synchrony and Neurofeedback

Abstract

Social anxiety disorder has been widely recognised as one of the most commonly diagnosed mental disorders. Individuals with social anxiety disorder experience difficulties during social interactions that are essential in the regular functioning of daily routines; perpetually motivating research into the aetiology, maintenance and treatment methods. Traditionally, social and clinical neuroscience studies incorporated protocols testing one participant at a time. However, it has been recently suggested that such protocols are unable to directly assess social interaction performance, which can be revealed by testing multiple individuals simultaneously. The principle of two-person neuroscience highlights the interpersonal aspect of social interactions that observes behaviour and brain activity from both (or all) constituents of the interaction, rather than analysing on an individual level or an individual observation of a social situation. Therefore, two-person neuroscience could be a promising direction for assessment and intervention of the social anxiety disorder. In this paper, we propose a novel paradigm which integrates two-person neuroscience in a neurofeedback protocol. Neurofeedback and interbrain synchrony, a branch of two-person neuroscience, are discussed in their own capacities for their relationship with social anxiety disorder and relevance to the paradigm. The newly proposed paradigm sets out to assess the social interaction performance using interbrain synchrony between interacting individuals, and to employ a multi-user neurofeedback protocol for intervention of the social anxiety.

2-Brain Regulation to Achieve Improved Neuroprotection during Early Development (2-BRAINED): A translational hyperscanning research project

“…As neuroscience is moving toward a radical shift in considering the interpersonal exchanges as the primary unit of analysis and observation [68, 69], clinical applications are meant to be implemented to innovate healthcare. Previous proposals have been advanced to apply such bi-personal neuroscienti c approach to the eld of adult psychiatry [70] and child development [31].…”

Physiological and neural synchrony in emotional and neutral stimulus processing: A study protocol

“…Thus, research using and extending the present approach might identify dysfunctional (emotional) interaction patterns in sub-clinical and clinical samples from a trans -diagnostic perspective. Only recently, Saul et al ( 62 ) proposed to not only investigate inter-brain synchrony in social anxiety disorder, but also to improve treatment via adding neurofeedback, pointing to fascinating new research perspectives. Moreover, as Koole and Tschacher ( 7 ) point out, the In-Sync model of psychotherapy provides the framework for training psychotherapists using feedback on movement and language synchrony in order to improve the therapeutic relationship.…”

Effectiveness of Neurofeedback on Psychological Stress, Salivary Cortisol and α-amylase Level in Students: A Randomized and Parallel-Group Clinical Trial

“…Clearly, the enhancement of the beta1 (12.5 -16 Hertz) band and the inhibition of theta activity emerged as significant positive differences in executive activity and decreased negative mood. Consequently, it can be inferred that the low power of fast brain waves may indicate diminished frontal cortical functions and damaged inhibitory function, which are acceptable to be affected in anxiety disorders (45).…”