How we process ongoing experiences is shaped by our personal history, current needs, and future goals. Consequently, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activity involved in processing these subjective appraisals appears to be highly idiosyncratic across individuals. 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.

Word count: 4872Abstract 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.

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Previous neuroimaging work has shown that increased reward-related activity following exposure to food cues is predictive of self-control failure. The balance model suggests that self-regulation failures result from an imbalance in reward and executive control mechanisms. However, an open question is whether the relative balance of activity in brain systems associated with executive control (vs reward) supports self-regulatory outcomes when people encounter tempting cues in daily life. Sixty-nine chronic dieters, a population known for frequent lapses in self-control, completed a food cue-reactivity task during an fMRI scanning session, followed by a weeklong sampling of daily eating behaviors via ecological momentary assessment. We related participants’ food cue activity in brain systems associated with executive control and reward to real-world eating patterns. Specifically, a balance score representing the amount of activity in brain regions associated with self-regulatory control, relative to automatic reward-related activity, predicted dieters’ control over their eating behavior during the following week. This balance measure may reflect individual self-control capacity and be useful for examining self-regulation success in other domains and populations.

Medical treatments typically occur in the context of a social interaction between healthcare providers and patients. Although, decades of research have demonstrated that patients’ expectations can dramatically impact treatment outcomes, less is known about the influence of providers’ expectations. Here, we systematically manipulated providers’ expectations in a simulated clinical interaction involving administration of thermal pain and found that patients’ subjective experiences of pain were directly modulated by providers’ expectations of treatment success reflected in the patients’ subjective ratings, skin conductance responses, and facial expression behaviors. The belief manipulation also impacted patients’ perceptions of providers’ empathy during the pain procedure and manifested as subtle changes in providers’ face expression behaviors during the clinical interaction. Importantly, these findings replicated in two additional independent samples. Together, our results provide evidence of a socially transmitted placebo effect, highlighting the importance of how healthcare providers’ behavior and cognitive mindsets can impact clinical interactions.