Title
Drumming Synchrony Study
Leaders
Dr. Sophia Kekes-Szabo (SophiaKS97)
Ean Choi (choiej2)
Yilin Chai (chai62)
Collaborators
Dr. Sohee Park, faculty advisor
Project description
This project examines whether drumming in synchrony with another person impacts social behavior in people with and without schizophrenia. 30 participants with schizophrenia and 30 healthy control participants complete a simple 10-15 minute drumming task with a researcher under two conditions: one in which they intentionally drum in synchrony and another in which they drum asynchronously or independently. During drumming, participants and the experimenter wear an Empatica EmbracePlus wearable watch that collects psychophysiological signals on their non-drumming hand. Before and after drumming, participants complete measures of preferred interpersonal distance, social connectedness, and other measures of social functioning. By comparing changes across conditions and groups, this study aims to determine whether interpersonal synchrony can temporarily affect psychophysiology and social comfort and affiliation. People with schizophrenia often experience social difficulties that are not well addressed by current treatments. This project is exciting because it tests a simple, low-cost, and engaging behavioral intervention that has the potential to enhance social connection. It also combines behavioral, physiological, and virtual reality measures to better understand how drumming together influences social behavior. If successful, this work could identify a novel approach for improving social functioning and quality of life in schizophrenia.
Link to project repository/sources
https://github.com/SophiaKS97/physiological-synchrony-empatica
Concerete goals with specific tasks for Brainhack Vanderbilt 2026
- Demonstrate understanding of associations between interpersonal synchrony and psychophysiology.
- Create standardized documentation for physiological dataset(s), including developing a clear data dictionary describing variables and outcome measures collected from the Empatica EmbracePlus wearable.
- Develop analytic plan/statistical analysis plan for psychophysiological data, including identifying the appropriate approach for quantifying physiological synchrony (e.g., windowed cross-correlations).
- Write script and reproducible workflow for preprocessing and analyzing psychophysiological data collected from the EMPATICA EmbracePlus wearable (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance).
- Establish working collaboration on this study beyond BrainHack 2026 event.
Good first issues
- issue one: Establish understanding of how the EMPATICA EmbracePlus wearable works and operationalize variables.
- issue two: Create a shared resource summarizing potential analytic approaches from prior studies.
- issue three: Document variable names, sampling rates, and experimental conditions (e.g., synchrony or control) from this study.
Skills
- Familiarity with social neuroscience or psychophysiology, or ability to read and summarize scientific literature related to these concepts.
- Basic understanding of experimental design and statistical approaches in behavioral research.
- Some experience with R or Python.
- Ability to create or write scripts (e.g., preprocessing script for psychophysiological data) in R or Python.
- Experience working with time-series data.
Onboarding documentation
https://github.com/jack-fogarty/LOTUS
Papers:
Behrens et al., 2020: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.27.269746v1
Burns et al., 2025: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6874510/v1
Varlet et al., 2012: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029772
What will participants learn?
- The fundamentals of psychophysiological data collection and analysis (e.g., heart rate and other forms of physiological synchrony).
- How interpersonal synchrony influences social connection and behavior.
- How virtual reality and behavioral experiments are used to study social cognition.
- Some basic skills in experimental design and statistical analysis.
- How time-series psychophysiological data can be analyzed.
Public data to use
Sample dataset from the Empatica EmbracePlus wearable will be provided.
https://physionet.org/content/wearable-device-dataset/1.0.1/
Number of collaborators
2
Credit to collaborators
- Co-authorship or acknowledgement on resulting manuscript(s).
- Project contributors are listed on the project's README.
Image
Project Summary
Examining the psychophysiology of interpersonal synchrony and its effects on social connection and preferred interpersonal distance in schizophrenia.
Type
pipeline_development
Development status
1_basic structure
Topic
physiology
Tools
other
Programming language
Python
Modalities
Peripheral physiology
Git skills
0_no_git_skills
Anything else?
No response
Things to do after the project is submitted and ready to review.
Title
Drumming Synchrony Study
Leaders
Dr. Sophia Kekes-Szabo (SophiaKS97)
Ean Choi (choiej2)
Yilin Chai (chai62)
Collaborators
Dr. Sohee Park, faculty advisor
Project description
This project examines whether drumming in synchrony with another person impacts social behavior in people with and without schizophrenia. 30 participants with schizophrenia and 30 healthy control participants complete a simple 10-15 minute drumming task with a researcher under two conditions: one in which they intentionally drum in synchrony and another in which they drum asynchronously or independently. During drumming, participants and the experimenter wear an Empatica EmbracePlus wearable watch that collects psychophysiological signals on their non-drumming hand. Before and after drumming, participants complete measures of preferred interpersonal distance, social connectedness, and other measures of social functioning. By comparing changes across conditions and groups, this study aims to determine whether interpersonal synchrony can temporarily affect psychophysiology and social comfort and affiliation. People with schizophrenia often experience social difficulties that are not well addressed by current treatments. This project is exciting because it tests a simple, low-cost, and engaging behavioral intervention that has the potential to enhance social connection. It also combines behavioral, physiological, and virtual reality measures to better understand how drumming together influences social behavior. If successful, this work could identify a novel approach for improving social functioning and quality of life in schizophrenia.
Link to project repository/sources
https://github.com/SophiaKS97/physiological-synchrony-empatica
Concerete goals with specific tasks for Brainhack Vanderbilt 2026
Good first issues
Skills
Onboarding documentation
https://github.com/jack-fogarty/LOTUS
Papers:
Behrens et al., 2020: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.27.269746v1
Burns et al., 2025: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6874510/v1
Varlet et al., 2012: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029772
What will participants learn?
Public data to use
Sample dataset from the Empatica EmbracePlus wearable will be provided.
https://physionet.org/content/wearable-device-dataset/1.0.1/
Number of collaborators
2
Credit to collaborators
Image
Project Summary
Examining the psychophysiology of interpersonal synchrony and its effects on social connection and preferred interpersonal distance in schizophrenia.
Type
pipeline_development
Development status
1_basic structure
Topic
physiology
Tools
other
Programming language
Python
Modalities
Peripheral physiology
Git skills
0_no_git_skills
Anything else?
No response
Things to do after the project is submitted and ready to review.
Hi @brainhack-vandy/project-monitors my project is ready!