Wallace Raven Star, Mckeown Bronte, Goodall-Halliwell Ian, Chitiz Louis, Forest Philippe, Karapanagiotidis Theodoros, Mulholland Bridget, Turnbull Adam, Vanderwal Tamara, Hardikar Samyogita, Gonzalez Alam Tirso R J, Bernhardt Boris C, Wang Hao-Ting, Strawson Will, Milham Michael, Xu Ting, Margulies Daniel S, Poerio Giulia L, Jefferies Elizabeth, Skipper Jeremy I, Wammes Jeffrey D, Leech Robert, Smallwood Jonathan
Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
Mathematical and Electrical Engineering Department, IMT Atlantique, Brest, France.
Elife. 2025 Jan 10;13:RP97731. doi: 10.7554/eLife.97731.
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.
观影是我们生活的核心组成部分，也是理解日常生活中认知背后大脑机制的重要范例。当代关于持续思维的观点认为，在“此时此地”理解事件的能力取决于听觉和视觉皮层对传入感官信息的神经处理，而联合皮层中的系统会对其进行调控。然而，目前我们尚不清楚在观看电影时，持续思维模式是如何映射到不同的大脑系统上的，部分原因是体验采样方法会扰乱大脑活动的动态变化以及观影体验。我们的研究建立了一种新方法，可将思维模式映射到电影不同时刻发生的大脑活动上，该方法不会扰乱大脑活动的时间进程或观影体验。我们发现，当体验采样突出显示与电影的多感官特征相关的参与度或突出具有情节特征的思维时，感觉皮层区域会更活跃，随后对电影中事件的记忆也会更好；另一方面，当额顶叶系统内联合皮层区域的活动减少时，就会出现干扰性注意力分散的时期。这些结果凸显了感觉系统在观影多模态体验中所起的关键作用，并为联合皮层在我们观影时减少注意力分散方面的作用提供了证据。
