Wallot, S. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2026

There is an 'I' in team: Intrapersonal physiological synchrony complements interpersonal physiological synchrony in team interaction

Interpersonal physiological synchrony (IPS) between interaction partners has been studied as a marker of social connectedness and coordination. However, little is known about how such interpersonal synchrony relates to the intrapersonal coordination of individuals' own autonomic systems during team interaction. The present study examined whether IPS and intrapersonal physiological synchrony (IAPS), defined as the within-person coordination of heart rate (HR), respiration, and electrodermal activity (EDA), function as competing or complementary regulatory processes. It also examined whether IAPS is state- or trait-like and whether teams high or low in both IPS and IAPS had better outcomes. Fifty five newly formed triads (N = 165; Mage = 23.87, 77% female) participated in a laboratory interaction including passive shared experiences and active collaborative tasks while continuous physiological activity was recorded. Synchrony within individuals and between team members was quantified using multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis. Across interaction segments, IAPS was positively associated with IPS in both HR and EDA, with stronger and more consistent associations during active teamwork versus during passive social contexts. These findings contradict a trade-off hypothesis and instead support a synergistic relationship between IAPS and IPS. IAPS exhibited state-like dynamics and sensitivity to features of the context, i.e., consistency within similar interaction contexts and higher in passive versus active social segments. Further, IAPS had limited associations with individual difference measures. Exploratory analyses indicated that teams characterized by both high IAPS and high IPS demonstrated more favorable outcomes, reflected in either higher objective task performance or greater perceived team efficacy depending on physiological modality. Together, these results suggest that effective team coordination is supported not only by IPS but also by the capacity to maintain coherent internal autonomic organization. They further highlight IAPS as a dynamic component of social functioning that merits exploration alongside interpersonal processes.

physiology↗

bioRxiv2017

Birds have swing: Multifractal analysis reveals expressive rhythm in birdsong.

Music is thought to engage its listeners by driving feelings of surprise, tension, and relief through a dynamic mixture of predictable and unpredictable patterns, a property summarized here as \"expressiveness\". Birdsong shares with music the goal to attract and hold its listeners attention and might make use of similar strategies to achieve this goal. We here tested a songbirds rhythm, as represented by the amplitude envelope (containing information on note timing, duration, and intensity), for expressiveness. We used multifractal analysis which is designed to detect in a signal dynamic fluctuations between predictable and unpredictable states on multiple timescales (e.g. notes, subphrases, songs). Results show that the songs' amplitude envelope is strongly multifractal, indicating rhythm is patterned by fluctuations between predictable and unpredictable patterns. Moreover, comparing original songs with re-synthesized songs that lack all subtle deviations from the \"standard\" note envelopes, we find that deviations in note intensity and duration significantly contribute to the rhythms multifractality. This suggests that birds render their songs more expressive by subtly modifying note timing patterns, similar to musical operations like accelerando or ritardando. Our findings bear consequences for neuronal models of vocal sequence generation in birds, as they require non-local rules to generate rhythm.

animal behavior and cognition↗