Inter-brain coupling tracks emotional co-regulation

When we have a negative emotional experience, we often recount this experience to others. Such emotional sharing plays a key role in building and maintaining interpersonal relationships, and is a vital component of most psychotherapies. Yet, while research shows the importance of social relationships for brain health, the neural underpinnings of emotional sharing remain largely unknown. Here, we asked whether successful processing and regulation of negative emotions can be linked to shared brain responses between dyads during and after emotional sharing. Participants watched videos eliciting either negative or neutral emotions, after which they shared their feelings about these videos with a friend. We simultaneously recorded the brain activity of both friends using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and compared inter-brain coupling within sharer-listener dyads before, during, and after sharing sessions. We found that shifts in inter-brain coupling were associated with changes in mood. Specifically, an increase in inter-brain coupling after recounting a video that elicited negative emotions was associated with reduced anger and dejection in listeners and increased vigor in sharers. These findings suggest that inter-brain coupling facilitates the co-regulation of negative emotions, and thereby maintaining a healthy homeostatic balance. This knowledge holds potential relevance for informing psychotherapeutic interventions.