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Poster A46 in Poster Session A - Tuesday, August 6, 2024, 4:15 – 6:15 pm, Johnson Ice Rink
Neural dynamics of context transitions in spontaneous thoughts
Kwon Heo2,3 (), Dasom Kwon2,3, Won Mok Sim1,2,3; 1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University Suwon, Republic of Korea, 2Department of Intelligent Precision Healthcare Convergence, Sungkyunkwan University Suwon, Republic of Korea, 3Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute for Basic Science Suwon, Republic of Korea
As our experiences of the external environment change from moment to moment, spontaneous streams of internal thoughts often shift from one topic to another. To examine the neural dynamics underlying these transitions of thoughts, we identified topic or context shifts in speech using a next sentence prediction (NSP) measure derived from a large language model, while participants spoke their thoughts spontaneously during fMRI scans. We found that the NSP scores of spoken sentences systematically captured transitions in participants’ internal thoughts. Furthermore, these transitions were associated with increased responses in the para-cingulate network and shifts in neural states of the default mode network. These results suggest that context transitions during spontaneous thoughts involve coordinated shifts in neural dynamics within the para-cingulate and default mode networks, providing insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the dynamic nature of spontaneous thought processes.
Keywords: fMRI Next sentence prediction Speech Thought transitions