Synchronous caregiving from birth to adulthood tunes humans’ social brain

Mammalian young are born with immature brain and rely on the mother’s body and caregiving behavior for maturation of neurobiological systems that sustain adult sociality. While research in animal models indicated the long-term effects of maternal contact and caregiving on the adult brain, little is known about the effects of maternal–newborn contact and parenting behavior on social brain functioning in human adults. We followed human neonates, including premature infants who initially lacked or received maternal–newborn skin-to-skin contact and full-term controls, from birth to adulthood, repeatedly observing mother–child social synchrony at key developmental nodes. We tested the brain basis of affect-specific empathy in young adulthood and utilized multivariate techniques to distinguish brain regions sensitive to others’ distinct emotions from those globally activated by the empathy task. The amygdala, insula, temporal pole (TP), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) showed high sensitivity to others’ distinct emotions. Provision of maternal–newborn contact enhanced social synchrony across development from infancy and up until adulthood. The experience of synchrony, in turn, predicted the brain’s sensitivity to emotion-specific empathy in the amygdala and insula, core structures of the social brain. Social synchrony linked with greater empathic understanding in adolescence, which was longitudinally associated with higher neural sensitivity to emotion-specific empathy in TP and VMPFC. Findings demonstrate the centrality of synchronous caregiving, by which infants practice the detection and sharing of others’ affective states, for tuning the human social brain, particularly in regions implicated in salience detection, interoception, and mentalization that underpin affect sharing and human attachment.

Shared Zones of Optimal Functioning: A Framework to Capture Peak Performance, Momentum, Psycho–Bio–Social Synchrony, and Leader–Follower Dynamics in Teams

By bridging the literature on shared mental models and the individual zones of optimal functioning, the author advances a new framework called the shared zones of optimal functioning. The shared zones of optimal functioning is a probabilistic methodology designed to (a) capture optimal and suboptimal performance experiences in teams, (b) track team momentum through the analysis of within-team performance fluctuations, and (c) estimate within-team psycho–bio–social synchrony and leader–follower dynamics (i.e., leader–follower dichotomy, shared leadership). To test the shared zones of optimal functioning framework, three dyadic juggling teams were asked to juggle for 60 trials, while having their performance, arousal, pleasantness, and attentional levels recorded. Ordinal logistic regression, frequency counts, and cross-correlation analyses revealed that each team showed idiosyncratic affective and attentional levels linked to optimal performance, team momentum patterns, and leader–follower dynamics. The implications of these findings for the development of high-performing teams and specific avenues of future research are discussed throughout.

Human connection and learning

Human connection is fundamental to learning. Through social interaction, we consciously and unconsciously share a range of states with others in the learning environment which assists us to understand one another and the experience. Underpinning this sense of connection is a phenomenon known as social synchrony – an innate capacity that allows us to connect with and understand others. The nature of this connection is represented in the quality of the learning environment, and is colloquially referred to as the ‘vibe’. We’ve all sensed it in our own classes or our own learning experiences in the classroom, but does it impact learning and, if so, how can we manage it to promote learning? These were the practical questions as an educator that drove my initial research into human connection and learning in school contexts. Using a science of learning lens, I wanted to understand the factors that contribute to this ‘vibe’, the strategies that we could use to enhance it, and the indicators of its quality. The findings have not just informed our understanding of classroom learning environments in schools, but also the role of human connection in learning beyond the classroom, into the workplace, in online environments, and across the lifespan.