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Poster C in Poster Session C: Wednesday, August 5, 9:30 – 11:15 am, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Biophysical modeling of inter-brain synchrony during social and non-social interaction

Xiaojun Zhou¹, Trang-Anh Estelle Nghiem¹; ¹Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen

Presenter: Xiaojun Zhou

Inter-brain synchrony (IBS) during social interaction is well documented but lacks a mechanistic explanation. Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by affected social interactions and reduced inter-brain synchrony, but underlying biophysical mechanisms remain unclear. We present a coupled whole-brain model of interacting individuals to investigate IBS across brain regions and its modulation by excitation–inhibition imbalance, hypothesized to be affected in autism. We compare social and non-social conditions and find that E/I imbalance systematically modulates IBS. Social interactions exhibit higher synchrony, showing a network hierarchy with the strongest effects on E/I imbalance in the salience network and dominant contributions from low-frequency bands (0.1–10 Hz). This framework further enables future integration with autism datasets for personalized modeling of inter-brain dynamics.

Topic Area: Development, Individual Differences & Clinical Populations