Brain-thought states during movie-watching reflect shared sensory anchors and film- and person- specific processes in association cortex
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Naturalistic paradigms such as movie-watching have transformed functional neuroimaging by capturing cognitive dynamics during rich, real-world experiences. A fundamental challenge, however, is determining whether the neural signatures identified during these experiences reflect general principles of cognition or the specific contexts in which they are measured. To address this question, we combined fMRI data from participants watching eight diverse films with continuous reports of ongoing thought. We found that the generalizability of brain-thought relationships depends on the cognitive process being recruited. Neural signatures linked to sensory processing remained robust across films, whereas those involving memory-related association networks depended on how we modelled between-film variability, indicating that cognition becomes increasingly context-dependent along the cortical hierarchy from sensory to association cortex. Within default and limbic networks, we identified two contrasting memory-related states with opposite consequences for comprehension. One, reflecting the integration of prior knowledge with ongoing experience, predicted better narrative comprehension and was revealed only after accounting for between-film variability. The other, associated with stimulus-independent thought, predicted poorer comprehension and emerged only when between-film variability was not modelled. Together, these findings establish when brain-experience relationships measured during naturalistic paradigms can generalize across contexts and when they instead reflect interactions between cognition and the specific environments in which cognition unfolds. More broadly, the consistency of a given brain-experiential association may depend less on where it occurs in the brain and more on the viewer’s contextual experience: perceiving the film, drawing on memory to understand it, or drifting away. Significance statement Films have revolutionized how we study healthy and atypical brain activity by capturing synchronized, semi-unconstrained dynamics of real-world cognition. Yet experience is rarely measured alongside brain activity, and most studies use one or few films; thus, we do not know whether these neural and experiential responses generalize across films. By combining brain imaging with continuous reports of ongoing thought, we find a hierarchy: sensory processing is consistent across films, whereas memory-related processes in association cortex are uniquely sensitive to how film context is modelled. Two opposing memory states relate to comprehension. One draws on memory to support understanding; the other reflects stimulus-independent thought and impairs it. Identifying brain–experience relationships across films is crucial for developing and understanding naturalistic neuroscience.
Authors: Raven S. Wallace, Samyogita Hardikar, Samuel Ketcheson, Bridget Mulholland, Ian Goodall-Halliwell, Bronte McKeown, Louis Chitiz, Michael Milham, Ting Xu, Daniel S. Margulies, Nerissa Ho, Theodoros Karapanagiotidis, Giulia L. Poerio, Tirso R. J. Gonzalez Alam, Adam Turnbull, Jeremy I. Skipper, Boris C. Bernhardt, Robert Leech, Jeffrey D. Wammes, Elizabeth Jefferies, Jonathan Smallwood
Institutions: Queen's University, Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University, Child Mind Institute, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, University of Oxford, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, University of Plymouth, University of Sussex, Bangor University, Stanford University, University College London, King's College London, University of York
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222892870