Can dyadic rope-skipping enhance cooperative behavior in female university students with depressive symptoms? Evidence from behavioral and fNIRS hyperscanning data

Background: Impaired cooperative behavior represents a prominent social dysfunction in individuals with depressive symptoms. Synchronous exercise has been proposed to facilitate social interaction. However, empirical evidence regarding its effects on cooperation and associated neural responses in individuals with depressive symptoms remains limited. This study examined whether a single session of dyadic rope-skipping enhances cooperative behavior and prefrontal interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) in female college students with depressive symptoms. Methods: In a randomized controlled trial, 110 female college students with depressive symptoms were assigned to an experimental group (28 dyads) or a control group (27 dyads). The experimental group completed a 30-minute dyadic rope-skipping session, whereas the control group remained seated for an equivalent duration. Cooperative behavior was assessed before and after the intervention using a Prisoner’s Dilemma task. Prefrontal INS was concurrently recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning. Results: Compared with pre-intervention, the experimental group showed significant increases in both individual cooperation rate (p = 0.041) and mutual cooperation rate (p = 0.028), along with significant decreases in individual defection rate (p = 0.039) and mutual defection rate (p = 0.040). Following the intervention, compared with the control group, the experimental group demonstrated higher individual (p < 0.001) and mutual (p = 0.013) cooperation rates, lower individual (p < 0.001) and mutual (p = 0.002) defection rates. fNIRS hyperscanning result showed significantly enhanced INS within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and frontopolar cortex following dyadic exercise. Although behavioral improvements were not linearly associated with neural changes (all p > 0.0033), robust synchronization increases were observed across prefrontal channels, specifically, INS changes in CH17-7 were strongly correlated with CH13-7 (r = 0.497, p < 0.001) and CH17-17 (r = 0.601, p < 0.001). Conclusions: A single session of dyadic rope-skipping significantly improved cooperative behavior and enhanced prefrontal INS in female college students with depressive symptoms. These findings provide convergent behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that synchronous exercise can promote social functioning in individuals with depressive symptoms. Clinical trial number: Not applicable.