Resilience-driven neural synchrony during naturalistic movie watching

Abstract

Psychological resilience protects individuals against the negative consequences of exposure to adversity. Despite increasing attention given to resilience for its role in maintaining mental health, a clear conceptualization of resilience remains elusive, and the intricacies of its neural correlates are poorly understood. Here, we recorded brain activity in healthy young adults using a 7T MRI scanner while they naturally watched movies. Stronger and more extensive resilience-driven neural synchrony, as estimated by inter-subject correlation, was observed in a wider set of brain regions in response to the negative movie compared to the neutral movie. Moreover, we found that high-resilience individuals had similar neural activities to their peers, while low-resilience individuals showed more variable neural activities. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), a personality trait that shapes biased perception and cognition, damped the resilience-driven brain synchrony in regions related to attention, indicating IU may compromise resilience by affecting attentional functions. We propose that similarity of neural responses among resilient individuals highlights adaptive emotional processing. Conversely, the variability in neural responses indicates vulnerability to adverse psychological outcomes. These insights shed light on the mechanisms of resilience, highlighting that it operates as a system encompassing multiple neuropsychological processes crucial for adapting to external stimuli.