If you’ve ever been riding a wave of creativity that feels like your brain and someone else’s have been Bluetooth-synced and are now finishing each other’s sentences, both instinctively knowing where the song/screenplay/woodworking project or whatever you’re building should go, then you’ve experienced what scientists call brain synchrony.

As described by a team of researchers publishing their findings as a press release on Eureka Alert, originally published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, it’s a real phenomenon that’s been observed in laboratories and real-world settings. Now, researchers say it isn’t just measurable, but it can actually be strengthened.

Researchers reviewed a decade of studies involving thousands of people, from regular everyday students to professional artists. Using portable EEG headsets, researchers found that when people are genuinely engaged with one another, their brainwave activity begins to align. Even more interesting, when participants received real-time feedback showing how synchronized they were, that alignment often became even stronger.

Sensory processing assigns salience to environmental and internal stimuli, shaping behavior through learned associations. In alcohol use disorder (AUD), sensory cue processing is dysregulated, driving problematic drinking patterns and hyperkatifeia in abstinence. While visual, olfactory, and taste cues are known to influence AUD progression, the neurocircuit mechanisms that regulate sensory information in addiction remain poorly understood. The primary somatosensory cortex (S1) encodes tactile, thermal, proprioceptive, and nociceptive inputs and projects to higher-order regions involved in motor and emotional processing. One such target is the insula, a hub for interoceptive integration and affective regulation. We previously identified that insula neurons receiving S1 projections in turn extend into the extended amygdala, implicating this projection in emotional processing.