doi:10.1038/s41467-024-55506-1engMalizia, FedericoLamata-Otín, SantiagoFrasca, MattiaLatora, VitoGómez-Gardeñes, JesúsHyperedge overlap drives explosive transitions in systems with higher-order interactionsART-2025-142600Recent studies have shown that novel collective behaviors emerge in complex systems due to the presence of higher-order interactions. However, how the collective behavior of a system is influenced by the microscopic organization of its higher-order interactions is not fully understood. In this work, we introduce a way to quantify the overlap among the hyperedges of a higher-order network, and we show that real-world systems exhibit different levels of intra-order hyperedge overlap. We then study two types of dynamical processes on higher-order networks, namely complex contagion and synchronization, finding that intra-order hyperedge overlap plays a universal role in determining the collective behavior in a variety of systems. Our results demonstrate that the presence of higher-order interactions alone does not guarantee abrupt transitions. Rather, explosivity and bistability require a microscopic organization of the structure with a low value of intra-order hyperedge overlap.2025http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/15056010.1038/s41467-024-55506-1http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/150560oai:zaguan.unizar.es:150560info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/E36-23R-FENOLinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/PID2020-113582GB-I00info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/PID2023-147734NB-I00Nature communications 16, 1 (2025), 555 [10 pp.]by-nc-ndhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.esinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess