Naturalistic stimuli evoke highly reliable brain activity across viewers. Here we record neural activity from a group of naive individuals while viewing popular, previously-broadcast television content for which the broad audience response is characterized by social media activity and audience ratings. We find that the level of inter-subject correlation in the evoked encephalographic responses predicts the expressions of interest and preference among thousands. Surprisingly, ratings of the larger audience are predicted with greater accuracy than those of the individuals from whom the neural data is obtained. An additional functional magnetic resonance imaging study employing a separate sample of subjects shows that the level of neural reliability evoked by these stimuli covaries with the amount of blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) activation in higher-order visual and auditory regions. Our findings suggest that stimuli which we judge favourably may be those to which our brains respond in a stereotypical manner shared by our peers.

The human brain is tightly coupled to the world through its sensory‐motor systems—but it also spends a lot of its metabolism talking to itself. One important function of this intrinsic activity is the establishment and updating of event models—representations of the current situation that can predictively guide perception, learning, and action control. Here, we propose that event models largely depend on the default network (DN) midline core that includes the posterior cingulate and anterior medial prefrontal cortex. An increasing body of data indeed suggests that this subnetwork can facilitate stimuli processing during both naturalistic event comprehension and cognitive tasks in which mental representations of prior situations, trials, and task rules can predictively guide attention and performance. This midline core involvement in supporting predictions through event models can make sense of an otherwise complex and conflicting pattern of results regarding the possible cognitive functions subserved by the DN.

STUDIES ADDRESSING EFFECTS OF MUSIC ON VIEWERS' perceptions of film have usually presented music simultaneously with a scene of interest. In the present study, 177 undergraduates viewed film excerpts with music presented before or after a scene featuring a single character. Whereas the film characters had emotionally neutral or subdued facial expressions, the music conveyed happiness, sadness, fear, or anger. Overall, participants tended to interpret characters' emotions in ways that were consistent with the particular emotion expressed in the music, offering evidence for both forward and backward affective priming effects. Our data confirm Boltz, Schulkind, and Kantra's (1991) findings on the role of music in foreshadowing. As far as we are aware, the effects of music on a prior scene have not been demonstrated in film music research. Our findings suggest that music does not have to be presented concurrently with onscreen images to influence viewers' interpretations of film content.

The scope of visual attention changes dynamically over time. Although previous research has reported conditions that suppress peripheral visual processing, no prior work has investigated how attention changes in response to the variable emotional content of audiovisual narratives. We used fMRI to test for the suppression of spatially peripheral stimuli and enhancement of narrative-relevant central stimuli at moments when suspense increased in narrative film excerpts. Participants viewed films presented at fixation, while flashing checkerboards appeared in the periphery. Analyses revealed that increasing narrative suspense caused reduced activity in peripheral visual processing regions in the anterior calcarine sulcus and in default mode network nodes. Concurrently, activity increased in central visual processing regions and in frontal and parietal regions recruited for attention and dynamic visual processing. These results provide evidence, using naturalistic stimuli, of dynamic spatial tuning of attention in early visual processing areas due to narrative context.

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