Ryssa Moffat

neuroimaging

While mapping brain activity cannot directly explain behaviour, it has the potential to provide neurophysiological context for cognition and behaviour. In my research, I mainly use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to probe changes in blood flow on the cortex. fNIRS is exciting because it is a portable neuroimaging technique which can be implemented in everyday social settings, such as collaborative activities between generations (Moffat et al., 2024a).

My PhD research explored how emotions conveyed in speech (normal and degraded, as if passed through bad telephone connection or a cochlear implant) are represented in the cortex and how they map onto listeners' emotion recognition abilities (Moffat et al., 2023). More recently, I have investigated the influence of social observation and motor synchrony (a form of interpersonal coordination) on activity in frontal brain regions, with specific attention paid to the observed individual's ability to suppress motor responses (Moffat et al., 2024b). Another of my projects has looked at how embodying movements by mirroring someone else influences our appraisal when we see other dyads repeating the same sequence of movements (Moffat & Cross, 2024).

friendships spanning ages

With the epidemic of loneliness front and centre in our minds, relationship formation is a very important topic. We can form meaningful social connections with people our own age, and people of other ages, who belong to older or younger generations. Many community efforts to combat loneliness use intergenerational social programs to bring people of all ages together, offering opportunities to form relationships, and ultimately improving physical health and wellbeing.

To guide such efforts, it is valuable to understand not only the social outcomes but also the underlying processes that make intergenerational interactions effective for reducing loneliness. We can gain this knowledge using neuroimaging and wearable sensing techniques (e.g., fNIRS and heart rate sensors). Then we can potentially use this knowledge to track changes in loneliness and social wellbeing more broadly (Moffat et al., 2024). What we learn can be useful for informing how organisers can design intergenerational programs to reduce loneliness.

Building on this perspective, we recently conducted a longitudinal hyperscanning to understand the mechanisms of intergenerational social connections. We invited participants to complete a 6-week art program. Participants were assigned to intergenerational and same-generation pairs and completed art-based and collaborative activities each week. Our findings suggest that the extent to which people’s brains and hearts sync up during interaction can help track changes in loneliness (Moffat et al., 2025).

interpersonal coordination

Synching up with other people, whether in our movements, emotions, beliefs and preferences, or even neural activity is a form of 'interpersonal coordination'. This coordination with others is central to how much we like each other, how well we collaborate – in short, it's key for relationship building and maintenance.

Recently, I have investigated how playing a mirror-game with a peer can enhance performance on cognitive tasks. This research also examines how being observed by one's partner from the mirror-game during the cognitive assessment impacts brain activity (Moffat et al., 2024).

Another synchrony-related project investigates how we, as individuals, differ in our aesthetic appreciation, or enjoyment, when we watch other people engage in motor synchrony (Moffat & Cross, 2024a), and how engaging in synchrony may influence our brain's responses to synchrony that we observe (Moffat & Cross, 2024b; Cross et al., 2024). My work also explores our abilities and/or willingness to engage in interpersonal synchrony through the mirror game and reveals about our personalities and bodily skills, and how well other people can extract this information from watching our mirror-game movements (Moffat et al., 2024).

women's brain health

An exciting new research chapter has begun!

I have joined the Zurich-based Women’s Brain Foundation (WBF). The WBF brings together researchers, healthcare providers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and patients to advance women’s health–brain and body alike. As an expert member, I contribute my research skills to help build an evidence-based case for including sex and gender in research and medicine.

I am in the process of positioning women’s health topics more centrally in my own research. Watch this space for exciting new research!

human–robot interaction

Social robots are appearing increasingly often in homes, classrooms, and public venues. These robots are used as companions and teachers, who can potentially alleviate loneliness and support children with anxiety related to learning new skills, such as reading. I have been involved in a series of projects researching children’s perceptions and knowledge about robots, as well as which features they would like in an educational/companion robot.

In one study, children met three different robots and read to the robot of their choice. This project took children's qualitative assessments of the reading experience into account, and also probed their preferences using quantitative ratings of various robot-features. Children found robots comforting, cool, and sometimes distracting (Caruana et al., 2023a), see also (Caruana et al., 2023b).

In a second project, we took a less constrained approach and invited children to illustrate their own reading robot buddies. Children with and without reading difficulty took part and their interviews highlighted the need for personalisation of robots for learning to read (Moffat et al., 2025).

We are also interested in social robots as a tool for teaching children about social equity, sustainability and safety of AI. We investigated how children’s level of understanding of these topics influences their critical stance towards robots. We found that children with more knowledge desired to hold robots and robot designers to higher standards. This research can shape how curricula are defined and how companies design educational robots. Ultimately, this research aims to foster a more responsible and equitable future (Leisten et al., under review; Leisten et al., under review).