Inter-brain plasticity as a mechanism of change in psychotherapy: A proof of concept focusing on test anxiety

Objective. There is a growing consensus that interpersonal processes are key to understanding psychotherapy. How might that be reflected in the brain? Recent research proposes that inter-brain synchrony is a crucial neural component of interpersonal interaction. The current proof-of-concept study examines, for the first time, therapist-patient inter-brain synchrony measurement during multiple sessions. To guide the design of future studies, we performed a precursory test in a small sample of the association between inter-brain synchrony and therapeutic change, hypothesizing that it would gradually increase over therapy, reflecting inter-brain plasticity.