# Healing synchrony? potential benefits of interpersonal synchrony for chronic pain management

## TL;DR

This paper suggests that being in sync with others could help people with fibromyalgia by improving their physical and mental health over time.

## Contribution

The paper proposes that interpersonal neural synchronisation may help restore connections in people with fibromyalgia.

## Key findings

- Fibromyalgia involves misconnections at neurophysiological, psychological, and social levels.
- Interpersonal synchrony might help restore brain-body and self-others connections in people with fibromyalgia.
- Repeated experiences of being in sync could lead to lasting improvements in wellbeing for those with fibromyalgia.

## Abstract

Fibromyalgia is called a pathology of misconnection at the neurophysiological, psychological, and social levels, and is characterised by widespread musculoskeletal pain, which is accompanied by a series of symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, body perception disturbances, and cognitive deficits. In this article, I argue that interventions that in various ways enhance interpersonal neural synchronisation (INS) may bring long-term benefits to people with fibromyalgia (PwF). In the first part, I briefly introduce studies on INS in the general population. In the second part, I hypothesise that interpersonal synchrony may contribute to symptom reduction for individuals with fibromyalgia, in the sense that repeated experience of being in sync with others may play a role in restoring both the brain-body and self-others connection in this population and consequently result in simultaneous lasting improvement of wellbeing. In the final part, I discuss potential future research directions.