Heroes and villains: opposing narrative roles engage neural synchronization in the lateral inferior frontal gyrus

Abstract

Neuroscientific studies have highlighted the role of the default mode network (DMN) in processing narrative information. Here, we examined whether the neural synchronization of the DMN tracked the appearances of characters with different narrative roles (i.e., protagonists versus antagonists) when viewing highly engaging, socially rich audiovisual narratives. Using inter-subject correlation analysis on two independent, publicly available movie-watching functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets (Sherlock and The Grand Budapest Hotel), we computed whole-brain neural synchronization during the appearance of the protagonists and antagonists. Results showed that the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which are components of the DMN, had higher ISC values during the appearance of the protagonists compared to the antagonists. Importantly, these findings were commonly observed in both datasets. We discuss the present results in the context of information integration and emotional empathy, which are relevant functions known to be supported by the DMN. Our study presents generalizable evidence that regions within the DMN - particularly the IFG and OFC - show distinctive synchronization patterns due to differences in narrative roles.