Physical Synchrony through a Beamed Robot Enhances Social Closeness and Inter-Brain Synchrony

Abstract

Integrating motion capture technology into a beaming system enables the formation of physical synchrony (PS) at a distance. This study extends previous research conducted in face-to-face (F2F) settings to investigate whether prior PS established remotely through a beamed robot (BR) can enhance social closeness and inter-brain synchrony (IBS). The results demonstrate that prior PS via BR enhances copresence, social presence, and IBS in overall prefrontal regions. Furthermore, we found that similar patterns of prefrontal cortex activation mainly occurred in the area related to cognitive social processing. Our results highlight BR as a platform for physically mediated social engagement in remote interaction contexts that can be utilized to facilitate future applications in remote education, collaborative problem-solving, and human–robot interaction.