I-Corps: Visualizing Physiological Synchrony

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to provide software, training, and services relating to measuring, tracking, and understanding interpersonal physiological interdependence - a biological measure of social engagement. Though this research area dates back more than half a century, new technologies including wearable physiological monitors, advanced statistical modeling, and smart phone computing have sparked rapid advancements in its potential application. Consistent findings in the scientific literature indicate that interdependence between people's autonomic nervous systems are indicative of psychosocial processes including engagement, empathy, emotional contagion, leadership, and teamwork. Such physiological interdependencies have been observed across a wide range of populations, contexts, and conditions, using different physiological measures and analytical approaches. Such findings allow interpretive conclusions to be made about social interactions using statistical models of relationships between peoples' physiology. This technology will potentially benefit treatment providers who deliver psychotherapy to mental health and intellectual/developmental disability segments of the behavioral health market, and to clinical trials researchers in the pharmaceutical industry evaluating medications with indications for mental health. This I-Corps project further develops approaches in the rapidly expanding area of social psychophysiological research, interpersonal physiology. Phenomenologically, when people interact, interdependencies between their physiological activities reflect their social relationships. These physiological relationships occur at dyadic and group levels. Due to the interpretability of physiological relationships, conclusions regarding social dynamics can be made through physiology. Through this method, continuously shifting interpersonal dynamics can be observed and quantified in ways that allow anyone to understand when, how, and to what degree one person is impacting another. Individuals or industries seeking to gain increased understanding of their own or others interpersonal engagement could benefit from this biologically-based objective method of assessment.