TY - UNPB

T1 - Mapping patterns of thought onto brain activity during movie-watching

AU - Wallace, Raven Star

AU - Mckeown, Bronte

AU - Goodall-Halliwell, Ian

AU - Chitiz, Louis

AU - Forest, Philippe

AU - Karapanagiotidis, Theodoros

AU - Mulholland, Bridget

AU - Turnbull, Adam

AU - Vanderwal, Tamara

AU - Hardikar, Samyogita

AU - Gonzalez Alam, Tirso R J

AU - Bernhardt, Boris C

AU - Wang, Hao-Ting

AU - Strawson, Will

AU - Milham, Michael

AU - Xu, Ting

AU - Margulies, Daniel S

AU - Poerio, Giulia L

AU - Jefferies, Elizabeth

AU - Skipper, Jeremy I

AU - Wammes, Jeffrey D

AU - Leech, Robert

AU - Smallwood, Jonathan

N1 - © 2024, Wallace et al.

PY - 2025/3/6

Y1 - 2025/3/6

N2 - Movie-watching is a central aspect of our lives and an important paradigm for understanding the brain mechanisms behind cognition as it occurs in daily life. Contemporary views of ongoing thought argue that the ability to make sense of events in the 'here and now' depend on the neural processing of incoming sensory information by auditory and visual cortex, which are kept in check by systems in association cortex. However, we currently lack an understanding of how patterns of ongoing thoughts map onto the different brain systems when we watch a film, partly because methods of sampling experience disrupt the dynamics of brain activity and the experience of movie-watching. Our study established a novel method for mapping thought patterns onto the brain activity that occurs at different moments of a film, which does not disrupt the time course of brain activity or the movie-watching experience. We found moments when experience sampling highlighted engagement with multi-sensory features of the film or highlighted thoughts with episodic features, regions of sensory cortex were more active and subsequent memory for events in the movie was better-on the other hand, periods of intrusive distraction emerged when activity in regions of association cortex within the frontoparietal system was reduced. These results highlight the critical role sensory systems play in the multi-modal experience of movie-watching and provide evidence for the role of association cortex in reducing distraction when we watch films.

AB - Movie-watching is a central aspect of our lives and an important paradigm for understanding the brain mechanisms behind cognition as it occurs in daily life. Contemporary views of ongoing thought argue that the ability to make sense of events in the 'here and now' depend on the neural processing of incoming sensory information by auditory and visual cortex, which are kept in check by systems in association cortex. However, we currently lack an understanding of how patterns of ongoing thoughts map onto the different brain systems when we watch a film, partly because methods of sampling experience disrupt the dynamics of brain activity and the experience of movie-watching. Our study established a novel method for mapping thought patterns onto the brain activity that occurs at different moments of a film, which does not disrupt the time course of brain activity or the movie-watching experience. We found moments when experience sampling highlighted engagement with multi-sensory features of the film or highlighted thoughts with episodic features, regions of sensory cortex were more active and subsequent memory for events in the movie was better-on the other hand, periods of intrusive distraction emerged when activity in regions of association cortex within the frontoparietal system was reduced. These results highlight the critical role sensory systems play in the multi-modal experience of movie-watching and provide evidence for the role of association cortex in reducing distraction when we watch films.

KW - Humans

KW - Motion Pictures

KW - Female

KW - Male

KW - Brain Mapping

KW - Brain/physiology

KW - Adult

KW - Magnetic Resonance Imaging

KW - Young Adult

KW - Thinking/physiology

KW - Cognition/physiology

KW - Visual Perception/physiology

U2 - 10.7554/eLife.97731.3

DO - 10.7554/eLife.97731.3

M3 - Preprint

C2 - 39792001

VL - 13

T3 - Elife

BT - Mapping patterns of thought onto brain activity during movie-watching

ER -