Hyperscanning, EEG/fNIRS and Choir: Neurophysiological Synchrony in Collective Performance

A BrainLatam2026 reading on fNIRS, ECG, respiration, movement, Jiwasa and collective musical performance

Before talking about choir singing, we need to talk about synchrony.

Singing together is not only producing sound at the same time. It is breathing together, adjusting the body, watching the conductor, sensing the group, predicting entrances, sustaining tempo, correcting micro-delays and creating a collective presence that no singer could produce alone.

That is why the study “Exploring multimodal neurophysiological synchrony and behaviour in choir performance: a preliminary study”, by Gregoire Vergotte and colleagues, presented at MOCO ’26, is so important for BrainLatam2026.

The central question can be stated as:

How do choirmasters and singers synchronize neurophysiologically and behaviorally during choir performance, especially when different parts of the choirmaster’s body are visible?

The study does not look only at the brain. It combines fNIRS, ECG, respiration, voice and movement, creating a multimodal reading of collective performance.

What the study investigated

The study involved three part-choirs from La Cité des Arts de Montpellier. Each group included a choirmaster and two subgroups of female singers: altos and sopranos, separated by a curtain to prevent direct visual contact between the subgroups.

The choirs sang the 18th-century English folk ballad “The Turtle Dove” under four experimental conditions:

no view of the choirmaster;
face view only;
arm view only;
full-body view.

The aim was to understand how visual coupling with the choirmaster changes synchrony across brain, heart, respiration, voice and movement.

This design is excellent because it does not simply compare “singing versus rest.” It asks a more refined question: which visual information from the choirmaster better organizes the choir system?

Recognition of the scientific question

The merit of the study is significant.

The researchers treat choir singing as a living, collective and complex system. This is already an important contribution, because music is often studied only as technical execution or auditory perception.

Here, the choir appears as a temporary organism: choirmaster, sopranos, altos, respiration, gesture, heart, brain and voice forming one field of coordination.

The scientific question is strong because it brings together art, health, social neuroscience and portable technologies. The study is also honest in presenting itself as preliminary, acknowledging the small sample size and pointing to future directions.

Equipment and sensors used

The study used a very interesting multimodal architecture.

For fNIRS, the choirmaster, one alto singer and one soprano singer were equipped with portable 8-channel systems positioned over the bilateral prefrontal cortex. The devices used were two Octamon systems and one Brite 23, from Artinis Medical Systems, sampled at 10 Hz.

Cardiac activity was recorded using Trigno EKG Biofeedback Sensors, from Delsys Inc., at 2000 Hz.

Respiration was measured using three respiratory belts connected to the auxiliary part of a TMSI Refa system, from Twente Medical Systems, sampled at 1024 Hz.

The vocal performance of the subgroups was recorded with two Neumann KM184 microphones, at 16 kHz.

The choirmaster’s movements were recorded using an Xsens / Movella motion capture system, with 23 three-axis accelerometer sensors, at 60 Hz.

All streams were synchronized using Lab Streaming Layer — LSL, which is essential for multimodal research with EEG/fNIRS, ECG, respiration, voice and movement.

Although the title of this blog includes EEG/fNIRS as a BrainLatam2026 horizon for musical hyperscanning, this specific study used fNIRS, not EEG.

Main results

The preliminary results show that the visibility of the choirmaster changes the choir’s dynamics.

In fNIRS functional connectivity, the sum of significant connections was:

26 in the no-view condition;
25 in the face-view condition;
43 in the arm-view condition;
47 in the full-body-view condition.

In other words, seeing the choirmaster’s arms and full body seemed to increase intra-brain and inter-brain connections, especially involving the choirmaster.

The ECG analysis also indicated a trend toward increased synchrony between choirmaster-soprano and choirmaster-alto when moving from the no-view condition to the full-body-view condition. Between soprano and alto, however, the trend was reversed.

This suggests something very interesting: the choirmaster’s role may not be simply to synchronize everyone equally, but to organize functional differences between subgroups.

The choirmaster’s body does not merely “mark time.” It distributes coordination.

BrainLatam2026 reading: choir as neurophysiological Jiwasa

From the BrainLatam2026 perspective, the choir is a strong example of Jiwasa.

No one sings the whole choir alone. Each person sustains one part, but the music only appears when the group breathes, listens and adjusts together.

This is “we” in action.

The study shows that this collective experience can be measured through multiple signals: fNIRS, ECG, respiration, voice and movement. Synchrony is not only in the final sound. It appears before that: in the body, attention, heart, respiration and prefrontal cortex.

The choir, then, is not only artistic performance. It is a living laboratory of belonging.

APUS, conducting and musical body-territory

The choirmaster works as a shared APUS.

Their arm, hand, face, posture and whole body create a territory of orientation for the singers. When the arm is visible, the choir system seems to gain more organization. When the full body is visible, this organization increases even further.

This shows that the choirmaster’s body is not a visual ornament. It is part of the choir’s cognitive system.

The singer does not follow only an abstract idea of time. The singer follows a body. And that body regulates entrance, intensity, breathing, expectation and safety.

For BrainLatam2026, this helps us think about the musical Body-Territory: music emerges from the relationship between bodies, space, gesture, listening and memory.

Zone 2 and collective performance

Choir performance can support Zone 2 when the group finds a living, flexible and non-rigid synchrony.

Zone 2 is not passive relaxation. It is enjoyment with attention. It is embodied metacognition. It is a state in which the person is present but not defensive; active but not hijacked; coordinated but not erased.

In choir singing, this appears when the singer feels their own body and, at the same time, feels the group. The “I” does not disappear. It adjusts within the “we.”

Vergotte and colleagues’ study shows exactly this complexity: synchrony may increase between the choirmaster and subgroups, while synchrony between subgroups may decrease. This suggests that good collective coordination does not mean everyone becoming identical. It may mean functional differentiation within a shared system.

From the article’s question to a BrainLatam2026 design

The article asked:

How do different visual coupling conditions with the choirmaster modulate neurophysiological and behavioral responses in choirs?

To answer this, it used:

prefrontal fNIRS, ECG, respiration, vocal recording, motion capture and multimodal synchronization through LSL.

BrainLatam2026 can expand the question:

How do collective musical performances create neurophysiological Jiwasa, reorganizing brain, heart, respiration, gesture, voice and belonging?

A future design could combine:

fNIRS hyperscanning + EEG/ERP + ECG/HRV/RMSSD + respiration + facial and laryngeal EMG + GSR + eye-tracking + motion capture + acoustic voice analysis.

fNIRS would measure prefrontal coupling between choirmaster and singers.
EEG/ERP could capture temporal prediction, error, attention and musical surprise.
ECG/HRV/RMSSD would evaluate autonomic regulation and cardiac synchrony.
Respiration would be central, because singing is organizing air in shared time.
EMG could measure facial, jaw, cervical and respiratory tension.
GSR would indicate emotional salience and activation.
Eye-tracking would show how singers distribute attention between choirmaster, score and group.
Acoustic analysis would measure timing, pitch, intensity and vocal cohesion.

A generous decolonial critique

The study is excellent and opens a very fertile path.

The decolonial expansion asks: how could these tools study choirs, traditional chants, circles, rituals, Indigenous songs, Afro-Latin American drums, samba schools, religious singing and community performances in Latin America?

Collective music in our territories often does not separate art, healing, memory, ancestry, politics and belonging.

For this reason, musical hyperscanning should not serve only to measure “perfect” performance. It can help us understand how communities create collective body, regulate suffering, transmit memory and sustain presence.

The decolonial question is:

Which forms of collective singing keep the social body alive?

DREX Cidadão, culture and public health

The connection with DREX Cidadão appears when we understand culture as social metabolism.

Choir singing, community music, collective singing and artistic practices are not luxuries. They are technologies of belonging, mental health, education, active aging and collective care.

If public policies fund only hard infrastructure but ignore living culture, they lose an essential dimension of health.

DREX Cidadão can be understood as a material basis for people to have time, presence and safety to participate in collective Zone 2 experiences: choirs, music groups, singing circles, art schools, cultural practices and music education.

A society that sings together may become less ill in silence.

Closing

The study by Vergotte and colleagues shows that choir singing is more than music.

It is brain with brain.
It is heart with heart.
It is respiration with respiration.
It is gesture with voice.
It is choirmaster with group.
It is musical APUS.
It is sonic Jiwasa.

fNIRS, ECG, respiration, voice and movement help reveal that collective performance does not happen only in the ear. It happens in the whole body.

Perhaps one of the great tasks of Decolonial Neuroscience is to show that singing together is not distraction. It is a deep form of human organization.

Because when we sing in a choir, music does not come only from the mouth.

It comes from the bond.

Reference

Vergotte, G., Laroche, J., Guyot, P., Pla, S., Dray, G., Jean, P., Perrey, S., Borot, L., & Bosselut, G. (2026). Exploring multimodal neurophysiological synchrony and behaviour in choir performance: a preliminary study. In MOCO ’26: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Movement and Computing, Montpellier, France. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3802842.3802873