Gamma-band inter-brain synchrony during shared emotional stimulation in romantic relationship

Shared emotional stimulation contributes to fostering robust interpersonal relationships such as romantic relationship. While romantic couples share the emotional states of their partner through empathy, the neural processing and the effect of empathy during shared emotional stimulation remain unclear. Utilizing a naturalistic co-viewing paradigm and electroencephalography (EEG) hyperscanning technique, we investigated the inter-brain synchrony in romantic couples while watching a positive movie clip. Compared to co-viewing a scrambled movie clip, couples exhibited more and stronger inter-brain connections in the gamma band when co-viewing the intact comedy clip, especially those connected couple’s frontal and temporoparietal lobes. Correlation analysis further revealed that the strength of the inter-temporoparietal connection of romantic couples was significantly and positively correlated with the empathy ability of females. These findings provide electrophysiological insights into the neural synchrony induced by shared positive emotional content and the role of empathy in romantic relationship.