Schedule of Events | Symposia

Uncovering multimodal narrative integration in the brain using functional connectivity multivariate pattern analysis

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Chelsea Ekstrand¹ (chelsea.ekstrand@uleth.ca), Christina Haines¹, Joshua Craig¹, Keva Klamer¹, KiAnna Sullivan¹, Peter Seres²; ¹University of Lethbridge, ²University of Alberta

Narrative coherence is a critical human ability that allows us to process fragmented information and integrate it into unified episodic memories. While previous studies have shown that narrative processing seems to be reliant on the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN), they often confound findings with unrelated cognitive demands, such as increased cognitive load or altered temporal coherence. To address these limitations, we investigated the functional connectivity patterns that support coherent narrative formation under conditions that preserve audiovisual narrative integrity while varying semantic context. Using fMRI, we examined brain connectivity while participants viewed the same foreign-language film under two conditions: (1) a rich context condition, where subtitles provided semantic details of the narrative, and (2) a sparse context condition, where the same film was presented with subtitles in a scrambled order. By maintaining the causal structure of the narrative, we isolated the effects of semantic richness on functional connectivity patterns. Results from functional connectivity multivariate pattern analysis showed that coherent narrative formation is reliant on unique patterns of functional connectivity to the core DMN (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex; PCC) and frontoparietal network (left inferior frontal gyrus and precentral gyrus, right angular gyrus). Of note, seed-based analyses of these regions identified dissociations among DMN subsystems dependent on contextual richness, where there was decoupling between the PCC and lateral DMN that was greater in the sparse context condition. These findings suggest that narrative coherence relies on specific patterns of functional coupling and decoupling to regions of the DMN and frontoparietal networks.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Multisensory