Schedule of Events | Symposia

Postdoctorial Fellowship Award Winner

Examining the iEEG correlates of internal vs. external attentional states during movie-watching from eye movements

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Christine Chesebrough¹ (christinechesebrough@gmail.com), Maximilian Nentwich¹, Ashesh Mehta^1,2, Stephan Bickel^1,2; ¹Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, ²Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University

Whereas much previous research on mind wandering requires subjects to self-report their attentional state, here we explored whether simple eye movement measures could reveal signatures of distinct attention states in the brain, without self-reports. We examined intracranial EEG recordings and eye-tracking data from N = 11 subjects as they watched two types of movies (narrative and ambient). Eye behaviors including gaze position, saccade rate, and angle of eye vergence were used to detect periods during movie watching when their attention was likely engaged or disengaged from the movie. Using these states, we compared neural activity during periods of relative internal compared to external attention, which revealed patterns characteristic of mind-wandering. Results differed depending on movie type. Comparison of internal - external attention states during narrative movies were associated with significantly higher alpha power in the DMN, DAN, limbic, and visual networks, and lower HFA in DAN and visual networks, suggesting attenuation of external sensory inputs. By contrast, internal-external attention states during the ambient movie revealed significantly higher alpha power and lower HFA in VAN, DAN, and visual networks, but significantly lower alpha power and higher HFA power in the DMN, suggesting a cognitive state characterized by dampened visual processing coupled with active ongoing thought. These findings suggest that eye movements alone may reveal meaningful differences in neurophysiological states related to attention, and that the nature of lapses in external attention captured by eye movements differ depending on task demands.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Multisensory