Our paper “The Human Dynamic Clamp as a Paradigm for Social Interaction” just got published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences! You can get the manuscript directly on the PNAS website, and also read the press coverage on Phys.org or ScienceDaily websites.

Brief summary:

“The human dynamic clamp (HDC) is proposed as a general paradigm for studies of elementary forms of social behavior in complex biological systems. HDC enables parametric control of real-time bidirectional interaction between humans and empirically grounded theoretical models of coordination dynamics. It thus provides necessary experimental access for laboratory investigations, while preserving the reciprocity and open boundary conditions inherent in daily life social interactions. As proof of concept, different implementations are illustrated, ranging from coordination of rhythmic and discrete movements to adaptive and directed behaviors. The HDC may be a powerful tool for blending theory and experiment at different levels of description, from neuronal populations to cognition and social behavior.”

If you want to test by yourself some interactions with a virtual partner, there is an online version, with all the code in open source on Github! Every person testing an interaction will contribute to understand how parameters of the model affect our sense of humanness. This is called crowd-sourcing and has already helped researchers in other fields. Please consider sharing the link, there is never enough data 😉