Mapping patterns of thought onto brain activity during movie-watching

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. Significance statementStates like movie-watching provide a window into the brain mechanisms behind cognition in daily life. However, we know relatively little about the mapping between brain activity during movies and associated thought patterns because of difficulties in measuring cognition without disrupting how brain activity naturally unfolds. We establish a novel method to link different experiential states to brain activity during movie-watching with minimal interruptions to viewers or disruptions to brain dynamics. We found states of sensory engagement occur in moments of films when activity in visual and auditory cortex are high. In contrast, states of distraction are reduced when activity in frontoparietal regions is high. Our study, therefore, establishes both sensory and association cortex as core features of the movie-watching experience.