RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Endogenous variation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex state dynamics during naturalistic viewing reflects affective experience
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 487892
DO 10.1101/487892
A1 Luke J. Chang
A1 Eshin Jolly
A1 Jin Hyun Cheong
A1 Kristina Rapuano
A1 Nathan Greenstein
A1 Pin-Hao A. Chen
A1 Jeremy R. Manning
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/16/487892.abstract
AB How we process ongoing experiences is shaped by our personal history, current needs, and future goals. Consequently, brain regions involved in generating these subjective appraisals, such as the vmPFC, often appear to be heterogeneous across individuals even in response to the same external information. To elucidate the role of the vmPFC in processing our ongoing experiences, we developed a computational framework and analysis pipeline to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of individual vmPFC responses as participants viewed a 45-minute television drama. Through a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging, facial expression tracking, and self-reported emotional experiences across four studies, our data suggest that the vmPFC slowly transitions through a series of discretized states that broadly map onto affective experiences. Although these transitions typically occur at idiosyncratic times across people, participants exhibited a marked increase in state alignment during high affectively valenced events in the show. Our work suggests that the vmPFC ascribes affective meaning to our ongoing experiences.