Minimal functional alignment of ventromedial prefrontal cortex intracranial EEG signals during naturalistic viewing

Abstract

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) has been thought to play an important role in processing endogenous information such as generating subjective affective meaning. Unlike sensory cortex, which processes exogenous information about the external world similarly across individuals, prior work has posited that vmPFC activity may be idiosyncratic to each individual, even when exposed to the same external stimulus. In this study, we recorded local field potentials (LFPs) from intracranial stereo electrodes implanted in patients with intractable epilepsy while they watched an emotionally engaging television show episode and evaluated temporal synchronization of these signals across participants in auditory cortex and vmPFC. Overall, we observed markedly lower intersubject synchronization of signals recorded from electrodes implanted in vmPFC compared to auditory cortex. A subset of patients, however, appeared to share similar vmPFC states during the more emotionally salient scenes. This work suggests that the vmPFC is involved in processing affective responses to ongoing experience in a state-like manner, but the specific states and temporal sequences are idiosyncratic to each individual, even when viewing the same television episode.

Identifying stimulus-driven neural activity patterns in multi-patient intracranial recordings

“…Although hyperalignment and SRM are most often applied to fMRI data [58], in principle these models are modality-independent. For example, one recent study found that applying SRM to intracranial recordings, taken taken as patients watched a movie, revealed a set of shared components that co-varied with the affective content of the movie [158]. The study replicated (using intracranial recordings) several key findings from related fMRI work [25].…”

“…Each participant's data must first be mapped into the common representation space. This may be carried out using anatomical [3,60,149], functional [27,57,58,158], or other [130,137] alignment methods. Next, the inference procedure (i.e., the algorithm for estimating model parameters from the observed data) must learn both local parameters (i.e., parameters that are specific to each individual) and global parameters (i.e., parameters that are shared across individuals).…”

Neural signatures of shared subjective affective engagement and disengagement during movie viewing

“…Further, the vmPFC has been involved in self‐referenced evaluation such as self‐attributing personality traits or recalling autobiographical memories (Northoff et al, 2006 ; Svoboda et al, 2006 ). Not only during movie viewing but even in the absence of sensory stimulation (resting state), the vmPFC exhibits higher inter‐individual variations in neural responses as compared to other brain regions (see L. Chang et al, 2018 , L. J. Chang et al, 2021 , Hasson et al, 2010 , Hasson et al, 2004 , and Xie et al, 2021 , for naturalistic paradigms and Mueller et al, 2013 , for resting state).…”

“…Not only during movie viewing but even in the absence of sensory stimulation (resting state), the vmPFC exhibits higher inter-individual variations in neural responses as compared to other brain regions (see L. Chang et al, 2018, Hasson et al, 2010, Hasson et al, 2004, and Xie et al, 2021, for naturalistic paradigms and Mueller et al, 2013.…”