1042
Symposium
Naturalistic neuroimaging has emerged as a powerful tool for studying brain function, offering theoretical and methodological advances distinct from conventional task-based and resting-state approaches. Movie-watching paradigms enhance ecological validity while increasing both the quality and quantity of neuroimaging data. These paradigms elicit complex brain responses that are especially valuable for identifying individual differences and addressing clinical heterogeneity. However, much of the research to date has relied on cross-sectional designs, subclinical populations, unimodal imaging, passive and abstract stimulus viewing. While these efforts have yielded important clinical insights, they fall short of fully utilizing the unique potential of movies to probe the intricate interplay of cognitive, social, and emotional processes often disrupted in neuropsychiatric illnesses. By tapping into these dynamics, movie paradigms can uncover causal and dysfunctional brain pathways underlying higher-order neuropsychiatric symptoms. This symposium will feature recent clinical research using innovative theoretical and methodological designs to realize the potential of movie-fMRI in psychiatric and neurological research. Featured work includes the integration of intracranial brain recordings, eye-tracking, peripheral physiological measurements, and the development of bespoke, clinically informed movie stimuli.
The primary learning objectives are to help the audience understand 1) the need for innovations in movie-watching paradigms to advance clinical neuroscience, and 2) how integrating novel approaches to naturalistic neuroimaging can enhance our understanding of psychiatric phenomena 3) novel analytical approaches for naturalistic neuroimaging data.
Our target audience includes neuroimaging researchers, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, neurologists, clinical psychologists, and experimental psychologists, particularly those interested in applying their work to gain a deeper understanding of clinical symptoms or phenomena in any population.
Presentations
Our understanding of the neurobiology underlying emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression, has largely relied on a narrow range of tightly controlled experimental paradigms. This focus has often overlooked how these disorders manifest in complex, naturalistic settings, potentially contributing to the stagnation in the development of novel therapeutics. In this talk, I will highlight our ongoing efforts to address this gap by 1) validating the use of movie paradigms as a robust methodology for studying anxiety; 2) exploring brain-heart interactions during movie-watching in patients with emotional disorders; and 3) illustrating how movies provide a unique and effective, yet untapped platform for investigating the pathophysiology of altered subjective experiences in emotional disorders.
Presenter
Peter Kirk, NIH Bethesda, MD
United States
The autonomic responses of the body—such as heart rate, skin conductance, and breathing—play a critical role in emotional experiences and are often disrupted in mood and anxiety disorders. Understanding how these signals are integrated in the brain, as well as the bidirectional communication between the brain and the body, is essential for unraveling the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these disorders. Naturalistic stimuli, such as movies, offer a powerful tool for eliciting robust, dynamic physiological responses linked to emotions. These stimuli can thus be leveraged for investigating body responses and brain-body dysregulation in clinical populations. In this talk, I will present research using multimodal physiological measures to assess inter-subject consistency during movie viewing. Additionally, I will showcase methodological approaches, including the analysis of brain-body interactions using intracranial EEG for biomarker discovery and precision medicine in mood disorders.
Presenter
Saurabh Sonkusare, University of Newcastle Newcastle, New South Wales
Australia
Making sense of dynamic complex social situations requires the quick integration of both auditory (verbal) and visual (non-verbal) social cues. Individuals with schizophrenia are known to have differences in the perception of both modalities. However, the stimuli used in most research paradigms typically fails to capture the process of the simultaneous processing and integration of these rich sensory streams of information. Here, I will demonstrate how movie-fMRI can be used to capture this integration. This approach highlights the TPJ-STS as the center of this multimodal integration and shows how this process goes awry in individuals with schizophrenia, resulting in disproportionately increased auditory/visual integration.
Presenter
Jessica Lee, New York State Psychiatric Institute New York City, NY
United States
Psychiatric disorders are associated with higher-order symptoms—low mood, anhedonia, paranoia, negative thinking, complex delusions, generalized worries, and the list goes on. Naturalistic conditions offer potential to evoke these types of symptoms, and to drive related circuitry, in systematic ways. However, the process of creating bespoke naturalistic conditions is as complex as the stimuli themselves and is different from the process used to create conventional task-based paradigms. This talk will cover different approaches to using movie-based stimuli in relation to psychiatric symptoms and clinically based treatment designs, outline specific challenges and tensions (including cultural and patient-partnered approaches) involved in the process of making these stimuli, and chart some possible paths forward to enhance rigor, generalizability and open-science collaboration in this subfield.
Presenter
Tamara Vanderwal, University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada