Narrative comprehension beyond language: Common brain networks activated by a movie and its script

Abstract

Narratives surround us in our everyday life in different forms. In the sensory brain areas, the processing of narratives is dependent on the media of presentation, be that in audiovisual or written form. However, little is known of the brain areas that process complex narrative content mediated by various forms. To isolate these regions, we looked for the functional networks reacting in a similar manner to the same narrative content despite different media of presentation. We collected 3-T fMRI whole brain data from 31 healthy human adults during two separate runs when they were either viewing a movie or reading its screenplay text. The independent component analysis (ICA) was used to separate 40 components. By correlating the components’ time-courses between the two different media conditions, we could isolate 5 functional networks that particularly related to the same narrative content. These TOP-5 components with the highest correlation covered fronto-temporal, parietal, and occipital areas with no major involvement of primary visual or auditory cortices. Interestingly, the top-ranked network with highest modality-invariance also correlated negatively with the dialogue predictor, thus pinpointing that narrative comprehension entails processes that are not language-reliant. In summary, our novel experiment design provided new insight into narrative comprehension networks across modalities.

A naturalistic neuroimaging database for understanding the brain using ecological stimuli

“…The mean FD was 0.138 mm (SD = 0.06) and there were 34.52 (SD = 74.72) timepoints above a 0.50 mm threshold on average (of 6998.20 timepoints or 0.49% of the data on average). Our mean FD compares favorably to 0.12 107 , 0.13 108 , 0.15 109 , 0.18 110 and 0.24 mm 111 in other studies with typically developing participants watching videos or movies during fMRI.…”

Movies and narratives as naturalistic stimuli in neuroimaging

“…Studies with naturalistic stimuli have helped elucidate neuronal mechanisms of narrative-level comprehension, which is something that would be difficult to study with presentation of single words vs. non-words or simple sentences as is typically the case in studies with non-naturalistic stimulus/task paradigms. Studies have shown that comprehension of narrative-level information that accumulates on larger timescales depends on DMN structures ( AbdulSabur et al, 2014 ; Babajani-Feremi, 2017 ; Gordon et al, 2017 ; Nguyen et al, 2019 ; Regev et al, 2013 ; Simony et al, 2016 ; Tikka et al, 2018 ; Wilson et al, 2008 ; Xu et al, 2005 ; Yarkoni et al, 2008b ; Yeshurun et al, 2017a ). The DMN structures appear to be involved across the encoding, recall, and reconstruction of narrative events presented in a movie ( Zadbood et al, 2017 , but see Gilead et al, 2014 ), with these structures’ involvement in narrative comprehension being transferable across languages also ( Dehghani et al, 2017 ).…”

Neural Processing of Narratives: From Individual Processing to Viral Propagation

“…This applies to many of the studies described in this review. Recent studies have controlled for this by showing both the film and its script and inspected commonalities across the two forms of narrative presentation (Tikka et al, 2018 ) and by obtaining behavioral self-reports on the interpretation of visual and auditory narratives to inform neuroimaging data analysis (Nguyen et al, 2019 ). These serve as excellent examples of controls that help overcome potential problems.…”