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Understanding Brain Dynamics During Movie Watching

Poster No:

603

Submission Type:

Abstract Submission

Authors:

Xuehu Wei¹^,2, Laura Rigolo², Colin Galvin², Alexandra Golby², Yanmei Tie², Einat Liebenthal¹

Institutions:

¹McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, ²Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

First Author:

Xuehu Wei
McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School|Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Belmont, MA|Boston, MA

Co-Author(s):

Laura Rigolo
Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA

Colin Galvin
Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA

Alexandra Golby
Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA

Yanmei Tie
Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA

Einat Liebenthal
McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Belmont, MA

Introduction:

*Einat Liebenthal and Yanmei Tie contributed equally as senior authors.
Studying the brain during movie watching can provide insights into the brain mechanisms underlying real-world cognition (Sonkusare et al., 2019). Previous research has revealed synchronized responses in large brain areas across individuals watching the same movie (Hasson et al., 2010). In this study, we aimed to investigate the dynamic patterns of activation and functional connectivity in the whole brain in relation to specific events pictured in the movie.

Methods:

Twenty-two healthy, right-handed native English speakers (11 males, mean age = 26.3 years, range: 19–39 years) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while watching a 7-minute clip from a family movie, "The Parent Trap" (Tie et al., 2015). The fMRI data were analyzed in 360 cortical regions defined in the HCP MMP 1.0 atlas (Glasser et al., 2016) and 16 subcortical regions defined in the Harvard-Oxford atlas. We employed a dynamic intersubject correlation (ISC) analysis and dynamic intersubject functional correlation (ISFC) (Simony et al., 2016) with a sliding window (window size: 15 repetition times [TRs] = 30 s; step size: 1 TR = 2 s). A one-sample group-level bootstrap hypothesis with 5,000 draws was used to test for significant variations in the synchrony of brain activation and functional connectivity over the course of movie watching. In addition, event segmentation based on neural activation was performed using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) (Baldassano et al., 2017) to identify meaningful temporal boundaries in brain activity over time in relation to the narrative of the movie clip.

Results:

Dynamic ISC of brain activity indicated that the extent of intersubject synchronization varies between brain regions and over the course of the movie (Fig.1A). Dynamic ISC of the whole movie time course revealed two periods (time windows: 26–46 and 124 –172, corresponding to 52–92 sec and 248–344 sec) in which significantly more brain regions expressed synchrony across subjects, in bilateral visual, inferior frontal and temporal language, dorsal attention, and dorsolateral prefrontal and limbic emotion, networks (p<0.05, FDR corrected, Fig. 1A). HMM identified 12 event boundaries, reflecting shifts in brain activity patterns (Fig. 1B). The event boundaries were interpretably synchronized with scene changes in the movie. Dynamic ISFC demonstrated overall elevated functional connectivity in the same two periods as dynamic ISC, with distinct network connectivity "fingerprints" at different time points, suggesting dynamic reconfiguration of functional networks(Fig. 2).

Conclusions:

Our study highlights the dynamic organization of the brain during movie watching, consisting of moment-to-moment changes in the activation and connectivity of functional networks. Periods of high synchronized brain activity coincided with periods of high functional connectivity, suggesting that dynamic reconfiguration of functional networks occurred in synchrony across viewers. Furthermore, the analyses demonstrated that movie scenes and events can be detected based on the dynamic patterns of brain activation. These patterns of activation and functional connectivity, which vary over the course of the movie, are relevant for interpreting the neural mechanisms underlying the dynamic processing of audiovisual content during movie watching, particularly in relation to emotional engagement.

Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:

Emotion and Motivation Other ¹

Language:

Language Comprehension and Semantics ²

Modeling and Analysis Methods:

fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling

Keywords:

Cognition

Emotions

FUNCTIONAL MRI

Language

^1|2Indicates the priority used for review

Abstract Information

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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.

Task-activation

Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):

Healthy subjects

Was this research conducted in the United States?

Yes

Are you Internal Review Board (IRB) certified? Please note: Failure to have IRB, if applicable will lead to automatic rejection of abstract.

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Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel? NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.

Were any animal research approved by the relevant IACUC or other animal research panel? NOTE: Any animal studies without IACUC approval will be automatically rejected.

Please indicate which methods were used in your research:

Functional MRI

For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?

3.0T

Provide references using APA citation style.

Baldassano, C., Chen, J., Zadbood, A., Pillow, J.W., Hasson, U., Norman, K.A., Baldassano, C., Chen, J., Zadbood, A., Pillow, J.W., Hasson, U., Norman, K.A., 2017. Discovering event structure in continuous narrative perception and memory discovering event structure. Neuron 95, 709–721. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.06.041
Glasser, M.F., Coalson, T.S., Robinson, E.C., Hacker, C.D., Harwell, J., Yacoub, E., Ugurbil, K., Andersson, J., Beckmann, C.F., Jenkinson, M., Smith, S.M., Van Essen, D.C., 2016. A multi-modal parcellation of human cerebral cortex. Nature 536, 171–178. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18933
Hasson, U., Malach, R., Heeger, D.J., 2010. Reliability of cortical activity during natural stimulation. Trends Cogn Sci 14, 40–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2009.10.011
Sonkusare, S., Breakspear, M., Guo, C., 2019. Naturalistic Stimuli in Neuroscience: Critically Acclaimed. Trends Cogn Sci 23, 699–714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.004
Tie, Y., Rigolo, L., Ozdemir Ovalioglu, A., Olubiyi, O., Doolin, K.L., Mukundan, S.J., Golby, A.J., 2015. A new paradigm for individual subject language mapping: Movie-watching fMRI. J Neuroimaging 25, 710–720. https://doi.org/10.1111/jon.12251.A

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