Can Human Hearts Communicate? Research Reveals Electrical Heart Synchronization

Many people respond in similar ways to stressful, frightening, or emotionally moving events. But is it possible for human hearts to communicate with one another through electrical signals?

It sounds far-fetched, but this is exactly what a study by Dr. Julia Neuland appears to indicate.

The Experiment: Measuring the Heart’s Electrical Activity

Dr. Neuland connected a group of students to ECG devices that measure the heart’s electrical activity. She seated them in different locations throughout a very large hall and had them watch various forms of emotionally stimulating content.

What emerged was striking. Individuals who were seated close to one another showed similar patterns in how their hearts responded emotionally, as reflected in the ECG data. These measurements do not track emotions themselves, but rather the electrical frequency of heart activity associated with emotional experience. Still, the results suggested that this activity becomes synchronized among people sitting near each other. The effective range observed in the study was up to about half a meter.

Skepticism and Alternative Explanations

Some researchers attempted to challenge the findings. Perhaps, they suggested, the participants could see one another’s faces, intuit emotional cues, and thus respond in similar ways.

However this explanation seems insufficient. Simply observing someone’s facial expressions cannot reasonably account for synchronization at the level of precise electrical heart activity.

Earlier Discoveries the Scientific World Struggled to Accept

In fact, this phenomenon had already been identified by researchers many years earlier. However, because it seems so counterintuitive, the findings were difficult to accept and were often dismissed or explained away.

As early as 2001, researchers from the University of Sussex School of Engineering used ECG devices placed not directly on participants’ chests, but at a distance of about one meter from the heart. The devices still detected electrical signals, albeit with less precision. This demonstrated that the heart not only generates measurable electrical activity internally, but also emits electrical signals into the surrounding space.

When Hearts Synchronize

Subsequent studies found that people sitting side by side begin to synchronize their heart rhythms electrically, as if their hearts were exchanging messages and converging into a shared pattern of activity. When participants held hands, the synchronization became even stronger.

The Heart as a Medium of Human Connection

According to Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona, the electrical currents of the heart play a central role in human communication. When a person approaches another with a positive attitude, their heart emits an electrical signal that is received by the other person’s heart. This interaction influences the quality of communication itself.