When Older And Younger Adults Draw Together, Brains Sync In Different Ways

Six Weeks of Drawing With a Stranger Rewired How Their Brains Worked Together

Loneliness is becoming one of the most serious health crises of our time, with effects on the body that researchers have compared to smoking, and links to memory problems and changes in brain structure. So when scientists wondered whether pairing strangers from different generations for a shared creative activity could change how their brains interact, the question carried real weight, and the answer turned out stranger than anyone expected.

A new study published in PLOS Biology tracked what happens inside the brains of older and younger adults who draw together for the first time, then keep doing it week after week. As the pairs got to know each other, their brains synced up, but in opposite directions depending on who they were paired with, a pattern that may point to new intergenerational relationships developing differently, at a biological level, than relationships between people of the same age.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Montreal recruited strangers from Zurich, Switzerland, paired them up, and had them attend six drawing sessions over roughly six weeks. Some pairs were intergenerational, one older adult and one younger adult; others were two younger adults. At every session, scientists measured both people’s brain activity while they drew, separately and together.

Brains in Sync, But Not in the Same Way

To measure brain activity, the team used wearable devices that track blood flow through the scalp using light. Two participants wore these devices at once, letting researchers detect when both brains responded in similar patterns simultaneously, a pattern scientists call brain synchrony.

Higher synchrony during collaboration is generally seen as a sign two people are paying attention to each other and processing an interaction together. Prior research showed synchrony is greater during collaboration than solo work, and this study confirmed that for both pair types.

What shifted across six sessions was unexpected. Same-generation pairs showed increasing brain synchrony over time while drawing together. Intergenerational pairs showed the opposite: their synchrony decreased over the same period.

The Dip May Signal Comfort, Not Distance

At first, decreasing synchrony might sound like a bad sign, as though the two people are growing apart. But researchers offer a different reading, drawing on existing work about how brain synchrony behaves between strangers versus close friends.

Intergenerational pairs may begin with heightened attention and mental effort directed toward each other, given how different they might seem on the surface. As familiarity grows and that strangeness fades, the intense mutual monitoring may relax, and synchrony decreases as a result. Same-generation pairs, who likely find common ground more easily from the start, may instead grow more attuned to each other’s subtle signals over time, which drives their synchrony upward.

The Loneliness Numbers

Loneliness ticked down and social closeness climbed steadily for both groups across the six sessions, a roughly one percent drop and four percent rise with each meeting, small but consistent shifts that added up week after week. Intergenerational pairs consistently reported feeling less lonely and slightly closer to their partners than same-generation pairs did, which researchers suggest may partly come down to perspective: being around someone much older or younger might shift how lonely a person feels, perhaps by offering a different vantage point on one’s own life.

Attitudes toward other generations stayed stable throughout. Intergenerational participants tended to feel similarly close to their own generation and the other age group, while same-generation participants leaned more toward their own.

Brain Activity Mirrored How People Actually Felt

Brain data backed up what people were feeling. Partners with similar loneliness levels showed greater synchrony while drawing together and lower synchrony while drawing alone, and closer-feeling partners showed greater synchrony too, each pattern tied to a different brain region involved in attention and processing social information. Emotion, in other words, was showing up in measurable ways in the brain itself.

A Snapshot of Something Larger

This study included 122 adults from Zurich: 31 older adults, aged 69 and up, averaging 76, and 91 younger adults, aged 18 to 35, averaging 22 to 24. All started as complete strangers, with no known neurological or psychological conditions.

Each session followed the same structure: questionnaires about loneliness and feelings toward other age groups, then three drawings with oil pastels while wearing the brain-monitoring devices, one alone behind a divider and two together on the same sheet, without speaking. Afterward, participants reported how close they felt to their partner.

These findings come with real limits: they’re tied to specific brain regions, one activity, and Zurich’s cultural context, and every session involved just one pair at a time rather than the group setting of a real community program. Future research will need to test whether the pattern holds in larger groups, across cultures, and over longer stretches of time.

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Disclaimer: This article is based on findings from a single peer-reviewed study and should not be taken as medical or psychological advice. The research is exploratory and does not prove that creative activities like drawing directly reduce loneliness. Anyone experiencing persistent loneliness or mental health concerns should consult a qualified healthcare provider.

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