Can You Feel My Pain? Neural-Behavioural Changes in Caregiver-Infant Dyads During Ostracism.

Overview

Authors: Niloofar Goharbakhsh¹, Louisa Kulke¹

ORCID iDs: Niloofar Goharbakhsh, Louisa Kulke

Developmental Psychology with Educational Psychology University of Bremen Bremen Germany

Institutions: University of Bremen (Germany)

Journal: Developmental science, volume 29, issue 5, article e70269

Dates: received 19 February 2026; accepted 27 July 2026; published online 23 August 2026; in print September 2026

Type: Research article · Language: English

License: CC BY

Identifiers: DOI 10.1111/desc.70269 · PMID 42633617 · PMCID PMC13500035 · OpenAlex W7204045348

Open access: hybrid, a free copy (OpenAlex)

Status: data only

Categories: EEG (modality), human (organism), pain (population), developmental (subfield)

Methods: Spectral & time-frequency, Statistics, Smoothing, state filtering, decompositions, Connectivity, Preprocessing

Keywords: EEG hyper scanning, ostracism, social exclusion, inter‐brain synchrony, theta power

MeSH: Brain*, Caregivers*, Infant Behavior*, Social Interaction*, Social Isolation*, Electroencephalography, Emotions, Female, Humans, Infant, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Theta Rhythm (* major topic)

Topic: Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (Social Psychology, Psychology), according to OpenAlex

Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 74 references in the paper

Abstract

Behavioural and neural coordination during infant‐caregiver social interaction is crucial for early emotional development and effective emotional regulation abilities later in life. This is particularly relevant to help infants deal with challenging social situations, such as being excluded from a group of others (ostracism). The coupling of neural and behavioural responses to ostracism in infants and caregivers has never been investigated in infants and caregivers simultaneously, nor how early infants perceive ostracism and how caregivers couple their behavioural and neural signals with them. In the current preregistered hyperscanning study, we investigated the effect of ostracism on neural and behavioural responses, inter‐brain synchrony (N = 34) and behavioural synchrony in caregiver‐infant dyads (N = 41) using a ball‐game. We compared how theta power, inter‐brain synchronization, and affective responses changed during ostracism. 5–7‐month‐old infants and their caregivers both showed increased affective responses. However, only infants, but not their caregivers showed higher theta power during ostracism. Inter‐brain neural synchrony was not generally higher in the exclusion condition compared to the control conditions and highly dependent to specific contexts. These findings indicate a co‐regulation process, suggesting that “more synchrony” is not necessarily better for interaction quality. Instead, effective caregiver–infant interaction may rely on the flexible modulation of synchrony, shifting between more and less synchronization depending on contextual demands. Overall, our study is the first to show that infants are sensitive to cues of ostracism experience from 5 months of age on and provides the first evidence of caregiver–infant behavioural and neural synchrony in response to ostracism. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/pXj3yu7MNw0.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

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Data

Datasets cited

osf:c3n6g — at OSF; found in “Data Availability Statement”

Data Availability Statement

The anonymised data are publicly accessible [https://osf.io/c3n6g/files/osfstorage]. The materials are presented in the manuscript (see methods section). There is a preregistration for all methods and analyses of the study [https://osf.io/dzh9s/overview].

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

The history of this record: each version stored by the harvester or made by a correction of its authors or of the maintainers of its code, and what changed in its facts. The texts of the paper (its abstract, its availability statements) are not part of it; versions that changed only those are not listed.

Version 3, 28 September 2026

Publisher: — → Wiley

Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 2 authors, 5 keywords, 13 MeSH terms, 71 references.

Cite

This paper

Goharbakhsh, N., & Kulke, L. (2026). Can You Feel My Pain? Neural-Behavioural Changes in Caregiver-Infant Dyads During Ostracism. Developmental science, 29(5), e70269. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70269

BibTeX

@article{goharbakhsh2026can, author = {Goharbakhsh, Niloofar and Kulke, Louisa}, title = {{Can You Feel My Pain? Neural-Behavioural Changes in Caregiver-Infant Dyads During Ostracism}}, journal = {Developmental science}, year = {2026}, month = sep, volume = {29}, number = {5}, pages = {e70269}, publisher = {Wiley}, issn = {1363-755X}, doi = {10.1111/desc.70269}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70269}, pmid = {42633617}, pmcid = {PMC13500035} }

RIS

TY - JOUR AU - Goharbakhsh, Niloofar AU - Kulke, Louisa TI - Can You Feel My Pain? Neural-Behavioural Changes in Caregiver-Infant Dyads During Ostracism T2 - Developmental science J2 - Dev Sci PY - 2026 DA - 2026/09/01 VL - 29 IS - 5 SP - e70269 SN - 1363-755X PB - Wiley DO - 10.1111/desc.70269 UR - https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70269 LA - en ER -

CSL-JSON

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