The Surprising Role of the Default Mode Network
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study |
|---|---|
| Population | Human participants watching a short movie |
| Topics | Default mode network |
| Key findings | DMN coactivation was selectively correlated with the cognitive state of surprise across movie events, not with other cognitive states, and this effect was specific to the DMN. |
Abstract
Abstract The default mode network (DMN) is a group of high-order brain regions recently implicated in processing external naturalistic events, yet it remains unclear what cognitive function it serves. Here we identified the cognitive states predictive of DMN fMRI coactivation. Particularly, we developed a state-fluctuation pattern analysis , matching network coactivations across a short movie with retrospective behavioral sampling of movie events. Network coactivation was selectively correlated with the state of surprise across movie events, compared to all other cognitive states (e.g. emotion, vividness). The effect was exhibited in the DMN, but not dorsal attention or visual networks. Furthermore, surprise was found to mediate DMN coactivations with hippocampus and nucleus accumbens. These unexpected findings point to the DMN as a major hub in high-level prediction-error representations.