Inter-Brain Synchrony in Psychotherapy for Test Anxiety

The study aims to examine inter-brain synchrony between patients and therapists over the course of psychotherapy. Eight patients underwent a 6-session course of psychotherapy for test anxiety including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and imagery work, following an existing protocol (see Prinz et al., 2019), as well as a pre- and post- treatment interview (with different interviewers). The researchers used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) imaging to record brain activity during both interviews and sessions 1, 3, and 5, and collected saliva samples to measure hormone levels during the same sessions. Participants completed questionnaires before and after the study, and before and after each session. The researchers hypothesized that synchrony will gradually increase over the psychotherapy sessions, that synchrony in the pre-treatment interview will be lower than in the post-treatment interview, and that synchrony would be correlated with increases in Oxytocin.