INTER-SUBJECT CORRELATION ANALYSIS REVEALS DISTINCT BRAIN NETWORK CONFIGURATIONS FOR NATURALISTIC EDUCATIONAL STIMULI

Abstract

What happens in our brains as we engage with educational material? The current work seeks to provide brain imaging evidence for unique synchronous neural activity and connectivity across three types of naturalistic educational stimuli. We collected fMRI data from 21 Princeton students while they watched short audio-visual clips from a computer science lecture, a history lecture, and an engaging story. Using inter-subject analyses to isolate stimulus-driven responses and connectivity, we developed a protocol for uncovering neural differences across the stimuli. Inter-subject correlation (ISC) analyses reveal localized neural synchrony and inter-subject functional correlation (ISFC) analyses reveal both whole-brain and seed-based network connectivity, yielding insights into cortical network configurations for different types of educational information. We find that narrative stimuli preferentially engages default mode network structures like the angular gyrus and precuneus, whereas computer science stimuli preferentially engages areas like the superior parietal lobule and intraparietal sulcus. We find that educational stimuli drive synchronized responses across brains in regions implicated in narrative, logical, and numerical cognition, and that the specific synchrony depends on the educational content presented in the stimuli.