Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Behavioral, physiological, and neural signatures of surprise during naturalistic sports viewing

James W. Antony, Thomas H. Hartshorne, Ken Pomeroy, Todd M. Gureckis, Uri Hasson, Samuel D. McDougle, Kenneth A. Norman
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.26.008714
James W. Antony
1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: jantony@princeton.edu
Thomas H. Hartshorne
3Princeton School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Ken Pomeroy
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Todd M. Gureckis
5Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Uri Hasson
1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Samuel D. McDougle
6Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06520-8205, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Kenneth A. Norman
1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Summary

Surprise signals a discrepancy between past and current beliefs. It is theorized to be linked to affective experiences, the creation of particularly resilient memories, and segmentation of the flow of experience into discrete perceived events. However, the ability to precisely measure naturalistic surprise has remained elusive. We used advanced basketball analytics to derive a quantitative measure of surprise and characterized its behavioral, physiological, and neural correlates in human subjects observing basketball games. We found that surprise was associated with segmentation of ongoing experiences, as reflected by subjectively perceived event boundaries and shifts in neocortical patterns underlying belief states. Interestingly, these effects differed by whether surprising moments contradicted or bolstered current predominant beliefs. Surprise also positively correlated with pupil dilation, activation in subcortical regions associated with dopamine, game enjoyment, and long-term memory. These investigations support key predictions from event segmentation theory and extend theoretical conceptualizations of surprise to real-world contexts.

Competing Interest Statement

K.P. runs a for-profit sports analytics website and generated the win probability metrics against which we compared our belief-state model. However, his role in this project was limited to sharing and discussing these metrics. Furthermore, although he may benefit from larger exposure, there is no foreseeable commercial benefit he would obtain from the results of this publication. The other authors declare no competing interests.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted August 07, 2020.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Behavioral, physiological, and neural signatures of surprise during naturalistic sports viewing
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Behavioral, physiological, and neural signatures of surprise during naturalistic sports viewing
James W. Antony, Thomas H. Hartshorne, Ken Pomeroy, Todd M. Gureckis, Uri Hasson, Samuel D. McDougle, Kenneth A. Norman
bioRxiv 2020.03.26.008714; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.26.008714
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Behavioral, physiological, and neural signatures of surprise during naturalistic sports viewing
James W. Antony, Thomas H. Hartshorne, Ken Pomeroy, Todd M. Gureckis, Uri Hasson, Samuel D. McDougle, Kenneth A. Norman
bioRxiv 2020.03.26.008714; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.26.008714

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (2548)
  • Biochemistry (4995)
  • Bioengineering (3503)
  • Bioinformatics (15291)
  • Biophysics (6934)
  • Cancer Biology (5432)
  • Cell Biology (7783)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (4564)
  • Ecology (7186)
  • Epidemiology (2059)
  • Evolutionary Biology (10264)
  • Genetics (7542)
  • Genomics (9835)
  • Immunology (4905)
  • Microbiology (13311)
  • Molecular Biology (5170)
  • Neuroscience (29607)
  • Paleontology (203)
  • Pathology (842)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (1471)
  • Physiology (2155)
  • Plant Biology (4788)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1016)
  • Synthetic Biology (1343)
  • Systems Biology (4025)
  • Zoology (773)