The surprising role of the default mode network in naturalistic perception
Communications Biology May 20, 2020 Talia Brandman, R. Malach, E. Simony
The default mode network (DMN), a set of high-order brain regions, is selectively correlated with the cognitive state of surprise when people watch a short movie. This effect was specific to the DMN and not seen in dorsal attention or visual networks. Surprise also mediated DMN coactivations with the hippocampus and nucleus accumbens, suggesting the DMN acts as a hub for high-level prediction-error representations, important for updating internal narrative representations.