Neural and experiential correlates of subsequent memory during movie-watching
Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 4 - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm EDT, Constitution B.
Raven Wallace1 (18rsw@queensu.ca), Samyogita Hardikar1, Louis Chitiz1, Ian Goodall-Halliwell1, Jeremy I Skipper2, Robert Leech3, Jonathan Smallwood1; 1Queen's University, 2University College London, 3King's College London
Movie-watching is a unique paradigm that allows the opportunity to record brain activity in contexts that closely resemble real-world situations. During movie-watching, our brains coordinate between processing sensory, narrative, and emotional information. Yet, the specific neural mechanisms that uphold and sustain the focus required to support effective memory for events in a film remain unclear. One potential explanation is that regions in association cortex, such as the frontoparietal network (FPN), which are believed to facilitate cognitive control, play a significant role in sustaining our focus during movie-watching (Duncan, J. (2013), Neuron). The current study addresses this possibility using a novel approach where thoughts are mapped using multi-dimensional experience sampling (mDES) in one group of participants (Sample 1) onto the brain activity of another set of participants (Sample 2) who watched the same films. We also recorded comprehension performance in our experience sample (Sample 1) to examine whether the brain states of individuals in Sample 2 were predictive of the experience and comprehension reported by Sample 1. Our research suggests that states of reduced distraction are linked to improved memory performance for information in a given film clip, and this occurs when brain activity shows greater activation of the FPN. Our results suggest that regions in association cortex, particularly the FPN, are crucial during our experience for maintaining focus during movie-watching and help ensure that information about the film can be accurately retrieved.
Topic Area: THINKING: Other