Sara De Felice

Longitudinal intergenerational hyperscanning reveals indices of relationship formation and loneliness Loneliness is globally acknowledged as a severe and burgeoning health risk, fuelling interest in helping people of all ages form meaningful social connections. One promising approach consists of inter...

What happens in the brain as people become less lonely? Intergenerational community programs can reduce loneliness, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. We collected and analysed 732 🧠-scans to find out!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
@introspection.bsky.social + @escross.bsky.social

Had the opportunity to present our #fNIRS hyperscanning study @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social @antoniahamilton.bsky.social @saradefelice.bsky.social at #ICON2025 in the Social And Embodied Language Learning Symposium. Felt small in the huge auditorium but the room was filled w/ inspiring questions!

Had a great time presenting our #fNIRS study w/ @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social @antoniahamilton.bsky.social @saradefelice.bsky.social @ #ESCOP2025!🧠 Grateful for the thought-provoking discussions that keep inspiring our work. A fantastic conference ending on a high note in beautiful Peak District ⛰️

This is such a nice welcome at flux! Thank you for this award at my first Flux Conference Meeting #flux2025 @fluxsociety.bsky.social

Looking forward to what it seems will be an excellent and thought-provoking symposium at #flux2025 @fluxsociety.bsky.social

🎓 FLUX is proud to spotlight Dr. Sara De Felice.

Her research studies the role of naturalistic social interaction in human learning and model the behavioural and neural dynamics that support this process.

Read the full interview at the link below:
👉 buff.ly/yzDQLA6

I wrongly booked my #flights to @fluxsociety.bsky.social
#flux2025 in #Dublin twice. Tickets are from #Naples to #Dublin and from #Dublin to #London x2 adults + infant + x2 10kg bags. Dates and destinations (and passenger name) can be changed for a fee. Contact me if interested!

Please share!

British Science Festival | homepage The British Science Festival is one of Europe’s longest-running science festivals, hosted at a new location each year. The Festival provides a platform for …

The British Science Festival - one of Europe’s longest-running science festivals - is happening 10-14 September 2025 in Liverpool! Lots of FREE events for all: britishsciencefestival.org?_gl=1%2Axaa2...

How do our brains and bodies support social learning in real time in the real-world? Check out the preprint by @saradefelice.bsky.social et al. Honoured to have been part of the team!

A Friday afternoon post to share our new paper (pre-print)! We modelled brain & behaviour & physiology from 27 unconstrained social learning interactions.
Learning emerged from non-linear brain-gaze coupling and asymmetric neural dependencies suggesting mutual prediction. Full thread below ⬇️

This has been an amazing team-effort shared with @fdi55.bsky.social Danny Tompkins Uzair Hakim @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social @paola182.bsky.social @antoniahamilton.bsky.social

This study contributes to move beyond isolated brain analyses toward multimodal models of learning as an emergent property of real-time, reciprocal interaction at both neural and behavioural levels.

Importantly, these cross-brain effects remained after accounting for gaze, nodding, speech and breathing, addressing common critiques that INS merely reflects shared sensory input or movement. Instead, we provide evidence for INS being a marker of mutual prediction in naturalistic interactions.

We found strong effects of speaking: participants showed greater activity in left SPL during self-speaking. In addition, we found that learner’s left SPL activity predicted teacher’s left PMv activity, suggesting role-dependent coordination in the language network.

This allowed us to examine asymmetric effects of speaking/listening and teaching/learning, going beyond the predominant focus on symmetric analyses of inter-brain coordination in existing research.

Question 2: Can one person’s brain activity be predicted from their partner’s behaviour and neural signals? Here we used a xGLM to model each individual’s activation as a function of self and partner’s gaze, speech, head-movement and physiology & partner's neural data.

These findings suggest that different social behaviours engage distinct patterns of brain-to-brain coupling that support learning through different cognitive dynamics.

In contrast, during moments of mutual grounding, learning is supported by high mutual gaze and high INS in systems for mutual understanding (TPJ).

We propose a dual-process model. When teacher and learner are not yet aligned, learning is supported by informational uptake dynamic, with high joint attention, low INS in regions for mutual understanding (TPJ) and coordination (right PMv), and high INS in language-related areas (left PMv).

This analysis revealed that learning was supported by teacher-learner inter-brain synchrony (INS), over regions important for mutual understanding (TPJ) and communicative coordination (PMv). Joint attention and mutual gaze modulated the relationship between INS and learning with opposite effects.

This paper asks two key questions:

Question 1: Which neural and behavioural dynamics predict successful learning? Here we used wavelet coherence analysis to compute inter-brain synchrony and predict successful learning.

We recorded simultaneous brain activity from 27 teacher–learner pairs as they taught each other facts about unfamiliar items as well as eye-gaze, speech, nodding and breathing.

How do our brains and bodies support social learning in real time?

We take an ecological and multimodal neuroscience approach to study mutual prediction and social coordination when learning with others.

It took 5 full years for this one! Full open-access pre-print: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Delighted to attend #ebbs2025 and share new work from @saradefelice.bsky.social and @paulawicher.bsky.social

If you are in the process of designing a #fNIRS study to investigate cognition and want a list of dos and don'ts, have a look at our primer. Pre-print available here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

@islalj.bsky.social @chiarabulgarelli.bsky.social @paola182.bsky.social @antoniahamilton.bsky.social

Last chance to apply for a fully-funded 2-year #PostDoc in my @soneatlab.bsky.social @universityofessex.bsky.social using #fNIRS #hyperscanning & behavioural assessment in #children.

👉🏻 SWITCH: pvrticka.com/switch-proje...

Deadline: 01.06.25
Start: 01.10.25

vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrec...

Research Fellow in Social Learning at UCL Discover Research Fellow in Social Learning jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.

Join us in London! The Language and Cognition Lab (with @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) is looking for a Research Fellow for 4-years to work on how children and adults from different cultures learn in social interaction.
Ad is here (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMN891/r...). DM if you have any question!

Honoured and grateful to have received a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out my LEARNINSYNC project! Together wih @giacomonovembre.bsky.social at the IIT (Rome) we will look at LEARNing IN social interaction and the role of inter-brain SYNChrony.
#MSCA #EuropeanCommission #Horizon