Biology subjects

Mckeown, B.

Publications and source records attributed to Mckeown, B..

8 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Brain-thought states during movie-watching reflect shared sensory anchors and film- and person- specific processes in association cortex

Naturalistic paradigms such as movie-watching have transformed functional neuroimaging by capturing cognitive dynamics during rich, real-world experiences. A fundamental challenge, however, is determining whether the neural signatures identified during these experiences reflect general principles of cognition or the specific contexts in which they are measured. To address this question, we combined fMRI data from participants watching eight diverse films with continuous reports of ongoing thought. We found that the generalizability of brain-thought relationships depends on the cognitive process being recruited. Neural signatures linked to sensory processing remained robust across films, whereas those involving memory-related association networks depended on how we modelled between-film variability, indicating that cognition becomes increasingly context-dependent along the cortical hierarchy from sensory to association cortex. Within default and limbic networks, we identified two contrasting memory-related states with opposite consequences for comprehension. One, reflecting the integration of prior knowledge with ongoing experience, predicted better narrative comprehension and was revealed only after accounting for between-film variability. The other, associated with stimulus-independent thought, predicted poorer comprehension and emerged only when between-film variability was not modelled. Together, these findings establish when brain-experience relationships measured during naturalistic paradigms can generalize across contexts and when they instead reflect interactions between cognition and the specific environments in which cognition unfolds. More broadly, the consistency of a given brain-experiential association may depend less on where it occurs in the brain and more on the viewer's contextual experience: perceiving the film, drawing on memory to understand it, or drifting away.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

The stability of thought: using experience sampling and brain imaging to determine the contextually bound nature of human cognition.

Human behavior is highly flexible, allowing efficient performance across a wide range of task contexts. A distributed set of frontal and parietal regions, commonly termed the multiple-demand network (MDN), is consistently engaged during diverse cognitively demanding tasks and is thought to support this flexibility. However, it remains unclear how patterns of MDN engagement relate to the qualitative features of ongoing cognition experienced during task performance. To address this issue, we examined the reliability of self-reported experiential features sampled during performance of a broad range of tasks. Across tasks, we found little evidence that particular patterns of thought were intrinsically more reliable than others, nor that individual tasks were associated with stable, characteristic thought profiles. Instead, the reliability of specific experiential features varied systematically across task contexts, with the same patterns showing high stability in some tasks and low stability in others. We next asked whether stable patterns of thought were associated with distinct neural signatures. We found that patterns of brain activity resembling the MDN tended to be present for tasks in which deliberate task focus was high, and when distraction was lower, adding to an emerging body of research suggesting that coordinated activity within frontal and parietal regions helps to establish a stable goal-focused mode of thoughts and actions.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Patterns of Ongoing Thought in the Real World and Their Link to Mental Health and Well-Being

The thoughts we experience in daily life have implications for our mental health and well-being. However, it is often difficult to measure thought patterns outside of laboratory conditions due to concerns about the voracity of measurements taken in daily life. To address this gap in the literature, our study set out to measure patterns of thought as they occur in daily life and assess the robustness of these measures and their associations with trait measurements of mental health and well-being. A sample of undergraduate participants completed multi-dimensional experience sampling surveys eight times per day for five days as they went around their normal lives. Principal component analysis reduced these data to identify the dimensions that explained the patterns of thought reported by our participants. We used linear modelling to map how these thought patterns related to the activities taking place at the time of the probe, highlighting good consistency within the sample, as well as substantial overlap with prior work. Multiple regression was used to examine associations between patterns of ongoing thought and aspects of mental health and well-being, highlighting a pattern of "Intrusive Distraction" that had a positive association with anxiety, and a negative association with social well-being. Notably, this thought pattern tended to be most prevalent in solo activities and was relatively suppressed when interacting with other people (either in person or virtually). Our study, therefore, highlights the use of multi-dimensional experience sampling as a tool to understand how ongoing thoughts in daily life impact on our mental health and well-being, and establishes the important role social connectedness plays in the etiology of intrusive thinking.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Mapping patterns of thought onto brain activity during movie-watching

Movie-watching is a central aspect of our lives and an important paradigm for understanding the brain mechanisms behind cognition as it occurs in daily life. Contemporary views of ongoing thought argue that the ability to make sense of events in the here and now depend on the neural processing of incoming sensory information by auditory and visual cortex, which are kept in check by systems in association cortex. However, we currently lack an understanding of how patterns of ongoing thoughts map onto the different brain systems when we watch a film, partly because methods of sampling experience disrupt the dynamics of brain activity and the experience of movie-watching. Our study established a novel method for mapping thought patterns onto the brain activity that occurs at different moments of a film, which does not disrupt the time course of brain activity or the movie-watching experience. We found moments when experience sampling highlighted engagement with multi-sensory features of the film or highlighted thoughts with episodic features, regions of sensory cortex were more active and subsequent memory for events in the movie was better--on the other hand, periods of intrusive distraction emerged when activity in regions of association cortex within the frontoparietal system was reduced. These results highlight the critical role sensory systems play in the multi- modal experience of movie-watching and provide evidence for the role of association cortex in reducing distraction when we watch films. Significance statementStates like movie-watching provide a window into the brain mechanisms behind cognition in daily life. However, we know relatively little about the mapping between brain activity during movies and associated thought patterns because of difficulties in measuring cognition without disrupting how brain activity naturally unfolds. We establish a novel method to link different experiential states to brain activity during movie-watching with minimal interruptions to viewers or disruptions to brain dynamics. We found states of sensory engagement occur in moments of films when activity in visual and auditory cortex are high. In contrast, states of distraction are reduced when activity in frontoparietal regions is high. Our study, therefore, establishes both sensory and association cortex as core features of the movie-watching experience.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Experience sampling reveals the role that covert goal states play in task-relevant behavior.

Cognitive neuroscience has gained insight into covert states using experience sampling. Traditionally, this approach has focused on off-task states, however, task-relevant states are also maintained via covert processes. Our study examined whether experience sampling can also provide insights into covert goal-relevant states that support task performance. To address this question, we developed a neural state-space, using dimensions of brain function variation, that allows neural correlates of overt and covert states to be examined in a common analytic space. We use this to describe brain activity during task performance, its relation to covert states identified via experience sampling, and links between individual variation in overt and covert states and task performance. Our study established activity patterns within association cortex emphasizing the fronto-parietal network both during target detection and a covert state of deliberate task focus which was associated with better task performance. In contrast, periods of vigilance and a covert off-task state were both linked to activity patterns emphasizing the default mode network. Our study shows experience sampling can not only describe covert states that are unrelated to the task at hand, but can also be used to highlight the role fronto-parietal regions play in the maintenance of covert task-relevant states.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Macro-scale patterns in functional connectivity associated with ongoing thought patterns and dispositional traits

Complex macro-scale patterns of brain activity that emerge during periods of wakeful rest provide insight into the organisation of neural function, how these differentiate individuals based on their traits, and the neural basis of different types of self-generated thoughts. Although brain activity during wakeful rest is valuable for understanding important features of human cognition, its unconstrained nature makes it difficult to disentangle neural features related to personality traits from those related to the thoughts occurring at rest. Our study builds on recent perspectives from work on ongoing conscious thought that highlight the interactions between three brain networks - ventral and dorsal attention networks, as well as the default mode network. We combined measures of personality with state-of-the-art indices of ongoing thoughts at rest and brain imaging analysis and explored whether this tri-partite view can provide a framework within which to understand the contribution of states and traits to observed patterns of neural activity at rest. To capture macro-scale relationships between different brain systems, we calculated cortical gradients to describe brain organisation in a low dimensional space. Our analysis established that for more introverted individuals, regions of the ventral attention network were functionally more aligned to regions of the somatomotor system and the default mode network. At the same time, a pattern of detailed self-generated thought was associated with a decoupling of regions of dorsal attention from regions in the default mode network. Our study, therefore, establishes that interactions between attention systems and the default mode network are important influences on ongoing thought at rest and highlights the value of integrating contemporary perspectives on conscious experience when understanding patterns of brain activity at rest.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Patterns of Ongoing Thought in the Real-World

Previous research has indicated that health and well-being are impacted on by both the way we think, and the things we do. In the laboratory, studies suggest that specific task contexts affect this process because the people we are with, the places we are in, and the activities we perform may influence our thought patterns. In our study participants completed multi-dimensional experience-sampling surveys eight times per day for 5 days to generate thought data across a variety of dimensions in daily life. Principal component analysis was used to decompose the experience sampling data, and linear mixed modelling related these patterns to the activity in daily life in which they emerged. Our study replicated the influence of socializing on patterns of ongoing thought observed in our prior study and established that this is part of a broader set of relationship that links our current activities to how our thoughts are organised in daily life. We also found that factors such as time of day and the physical location are associated with reported patterns of thought, factors that are important for future studies to explore. Our study suggests that sampling thinking in the real world may be able to provide a set of comprehensive thinking-activity mappings that will be useful to researchers and health care professionals interested in health and well-being.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Exploring patterns of ongoing thought under naturalistic and task-based conditions

Previous research suggests that patterns of ongoing thought are heterogeneous, varying across situations and individuals. The current study investigated the influence of a wide range of tasks and individual affective style on ongoing patterns of thought. In total, we used 9 different tasks and measured ongoing thought using multidimensional experience sampling. A Principle Component Analysis of the experience sampling data revealed four patterns of ongoing thought. Linear Mixed Modelling was used to examine the contextual distribution of the thought patterns. Different thought patterns were found to relate to different types of conditions. Intrusive and negative thought pattern expression was found to be influenced by individual affective style (depression level). Overall, these data show that patterns of thought are subject to both contextual and intrinsic variation, suggesting that understanding these important features of experience across a broad range of situations will be useful in understanding their role in human experience. HighlightsO_LIPatterns of thought vary across different task contexts C_LIO_LIThought pattern expression is influenced by individual affective style C_LIO_LIThere is a need to broaden the tasks used to study ongoing thought C_LI

neuroscience↗