Child-mother inter-brain synchrony
Hyperscanning (simultaneous recording of brain activities from more than one participant) is increasingly used in social neuroscience to study the neural processes during interpersonal interactions. We performed fNIRS hyperscanning experiments in typically developing children and their mothers during a naturalistic table-based toy playing paradigm. We demonstrated success in employing phase transfer entropy, which enables capturing directionality (child-led or mother-led neural interactions) compared to more conventional methods (e.g., wavelet coherence), to measure inter-brain synchrony:
Figure from Papoutselou et al. (2024, EJN) (licensed under CC BY 4.0)
Papoutselou, E., Harrison, S., Mai, G., Buck, B., Patil, N., Wiggins, I., & Hartley, D. (2024). Investigating mother-child inter‐brain synchrony in a naturalistic paradigm: A functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning study. European Journal of Neuroscience, 59(6):1386-1403. View publication >>
While hyperscanning is also being applied in cochlear-implanted children, longitudinal changes in child-mother inter-brain synchrony will be examined alongside an NIHR funded efficacy trial of speech and language therapy in CI children to test how child-mother interaction may change following SLT.