Humans are inherently social, and our capacity to coordinate actions with others is central to communication, learning, and well-being. A key behavioral marker of social interaction is group synchrony - the temporal coordination of rhythmic actions across multiple persons. Although synchrony often occurs in large groups such as orchestras or sports teams, most neural studies have been performed with dyads (two persons). Scaling studies beyond the dyad presents significant methodological challenges, including building measurement platforms that simultaneously acquire data from many individuals and developing paradigms that can be systematically scaled across n-person groups.
To address these challenges, this project focuses on the development of a low-latency, scalable platform designed to measure behavioral and neural synchrony in groups of up to ten participants during structured musical interaction. Participants tap on custom sensors; each tap generates the next tone in a melodic sequence, enabling musically meaningful joint action without requiring participants to learn complex motor sequences. Group synchrony emerges when participants align their taps to an assigned leader, producing simultaneous taps or stable phase relationships. A sequence of rhythmic taps is followed by an expressive pause, with the leader determining the length of the pause and the other participants tasked with anticipating its end.
Refer to the following paper for additional information.
Zamm and Kappel et al., "The Tapping Orchestra: A 10-Person Platform for Measuring Behavioral & Neural Synchrony During Group Interaction"
Funding: The work is supported by Seed Project Grant (26245) from the Interacting Minds Center at
Aarhus University and Center for Ear-EEG
