Two-Person Approaches to Studying Social Interaction in Psychiatry: Uses and Clinical Relevance.

Yafeng Pan,Xiaojun Cheng

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00301

Yafeng Pan, Xiaojun Cheng

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00301

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Abstract

Social interaction is ubiquitous in human society. The two-person approach—a new, powerful tool to study information exchange and social behaviors—aims to characterize the behavioral dynamics and neural mechanisms of real-time social interactions. In this review, we discuss the benefits of two-person approaches compared to those for conventional, single-person approaches. We describe measures and paradigms that model social interaction in three dimensions (3-D), including eye-to-eye, body-to-body, and brain-to-brain relationships. We then discuss how these two-person measures and paradigms are used in psychiatric conditions (e.g., autism, mood disorders, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and psychotherapy). Furthermore, the advantages of a two-person approach (e.g., dual brain stimulation, multi-person neurofeedback) in clinical interventions are described. Finally, we discuss the methodological and translational challenges surrounding the application of two-person approaches in psychiatry, as well as prospects for future two-/multi-person studies. We conclude that two-person approaches serve as useful additions to the range of behavioral and neuroscientific methods available to assess social interaction in psychiatric settings, for both diagnostic techniques and complementary interventions.

Highlights

The scientific study of the neurophysiological mechanisms that underlie social processes is undergoing a major paradigm shift: moving from the examination of single brains to the simultaneous acquisition of data from multiple brains and their interaction [see, e.g., our recent contributions: [1,2,3,4,5,6]; see [7,8,9] for reviews]
We will focus on two-person studies in two aspects: first, the applications of the two-person approach in multiple cases of psychiatric conditions, and second, Social Interaction in Pyschiatry the potential benefits of the two-person approach in psychiatric interventions
The findings suggest that the impairment of joint attention in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) could be related to the difficulty in understanding shared intention through eye contact, which is represented by reduced inter-subject synchronization of cortical regions including the right inferior frontal gyrus

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The scientific study of the neurophysiological mechanisms that underlie social processes is undergoing a major paradigm shift: moving from the examination of single brains to the simultaneous acquisition of data from multiple brains and their interaction [see, e.g., our recent contributions: [1,2,3,4,5,6]; see [7,8,9] for reviews]. Saito and colleagues initiated a combination of fMRI hyperscanning and dual eye-tracking With this novel setup, they found that paired subjects showed higher inter-individual neural synchronization in the right inferior frontal gyrus during mutual gaze and joint attention activities than non-paired subjects [28]. It was reported that individuals with high-functioning autism showed a reduced sensitivity to the other person's responsiveness to one's own behavior when they were required to have real-time sensorimotor interaction with normal individuals; they performed well as controls under the highly simplified, computer-mediated, embodied form of social interaction This finding supports the increasing use of virtual reality interfaces to help people with ASD better compensate for their social disabilities [91]. Future studies are needed to consolidate the previous findings from two-person studies by enlarging the sample size to increase statistical power

Statistical Methods of Assessing Synchrony

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES