Trait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative

Abstract

Individuals often interpret the same event in different ways. How do personality traits modulate brain activity evoked by a complex stimulus? Here we report results from a naturalistic paradigm designed to draw out both neural and behavioral variation along a specific dimension of interest, namely paranoia. Participants listen to a narrative during functional MRI describing an ambiguous social scenario, written such that some individuals would find it highly suspicious, while others less so. Using inter-subject correlation analysis, we identify several brain areas that are differentially synchronized during listening between participants with high and low trait-level paranoia, including theory-of-mind regions. Follow-up analyses indicate that these regions are more active to mentalizing events in high-paranoia individuals. Analyzing participants’ speech as they freely recall the narrative reveals semantic and syntactic features that also scale with paranoia. Results indicate that a personality trait can act as an intrinsic “prime,” yielding different neural and behavioral responses to the same stimulus across individuals.

Atypical MEG inter-subject correlation during listening to continuous natural speech in dyslexia

“…These fMRI studies and the results of the present study showed significant ISC in bilateral auditory cortices and language areas along the superior temporal cortex, parietal and midline areas, including precuneus, as well as frontal areas. The present results replicate earlier findings with complex natural stimuli, that is, consistent activation not only in primary sensory cortices but also in higher-order regions (Hasson et al, 2004;Lerner et al, 2011;Finn et al, 2018). Bilateral temporal areas are known to be involved in speech processing and comprehension (see e.g., Hickok and Poeppel, 2007), and therefore were expected to show ISC in our study.…”

“…The ISC patterns we observed in typical readers were overall consistent with those previously found with fMRI during listening to natural speech (Wilson et al, 2008;Stephens et al, 2010;Lerner et al, 2011;Silbert et al, 2014;Finn et al, 2018). These fMRI studies and the results of the present study showed significant ISC in bilateral auditory cortices and language areas along the superior temporal cortex, parietal and midline areas, including precuneus, as well as frontal areas.…”

“…ISC reflects functioning of cortical areas that respond to the time-varying stimulus dynamics, which in speech are manifold: For example, acoustic, phonological, syntactic, and semantic features likely activate lower-and higher-level brain functions related to processing and comprehension of speech. In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, ISCs were found in healthy adult participants listening to natural speech in bilateral temporal areas, frontal areas, parietal areas including premotor cortex, and midline areas including precuneus (Wilson et al, 2008;Stephens et al, 2010;Lerner et al, 2011;Silbert et al, 2014;Finn et al, 2018). The first objective of the current study was to confirm and extend our knowledge of the brain areas that couple between healthy adult participants during listening to natural speech using magnetoencephalography (MEG).…”

“…ISC has been extensively applied during naturalistic paradigms in fMRI, e.g. movie viewing (Hasson et al, 2004;Jääskeläinen et al, 2008;Kauppi et al, 2010;Nummenmaa et al, 2012), music listening (Abrams et al, 2013;Alluri et al, 2013), and speech processing (Wilson et al, 2008;Stephens et al, 2010;Lerner et al, 2011;Silbert et al, 2014;Finn et al, 2018). However, its application to MEG has been a lot more scarce.…”

Inter-subject phase synchronization differentiates neural networks underlying physical pain empathy

“…For over a decade, inter-subject synchronization measures of brain activation have been well established in tasks related to auditory stimuli (Hejnar, Kiehl, & Calhoun, 2007), narrated stories (Finn, Corlett, Chen, Bandettini, & Constable, 2018) and movies (Glerean, Salmi, Lahnakoski, Jääskeläinen, & Sams, 2012;Hasson, Nir, Levy, Fuhrmann, & Malach, 2004;Kauppi, Jääskeläinen, Sams, & Tohka, 2010). These studies are based on earlier work demonstrating that brain regions produce similar temporal dynamics across participants experiencing the same task event concurrently (Hanson, Gagliardi, & Hanson, 2009).…”