ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2016
Attention Strongly Modulates Reliability of Neural Responses to Naturalistic Narrative Stimuli.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
88 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Intersubject correlation as a predictor of attention: a systematic review.BMC psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Wearable Biosensor Technology in Education: A Systematic Review.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Pooled it
- Delivery and Attitude Modulate Shared Neural Processing of Speech Through Distinct Frequency Channels.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Article
- Computational Counterfactuals Reveal Non-Additive Audiovisual Semantics in Natural Movie Responses.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Bouncing back: Transient, but not long-lasting, effects of background disturbances on speech processing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A neuroimaging dataset combining movie-watching, eye-tracking, sensorimotor mapping, and cognitive tasks.Scientific data · 2026Article
- The effects of spoiler types on audience immersion: an inter-subject correlation study of heart rate.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Neural Signatures of Engagement and Event Segmentation during Story Listening in Background Noise.eNeuro · 2026Article
- Article
- Successful Public Speaking Enhances Neural Alignment in Audience Language Networks.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Validation of novel naturalistic limb movement stimuli for studying biological motion perception in adults.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Interpersonal heart rate synchrony and prosocial behaviors in musical contexts.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Differential effects of external noise and situational interest on neurophysiological responses during video based learning.NPJ science of learning · 2025Article
- Green urban environments enhance brain-to-brain synchrony.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Neural similarity predicts whether strangers become friends.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Article
- A naturalistic fMRI dataset in response to public speaking.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Stimulus Selection Influences Prediction of Individual Phenotypes in Naturalistic Conditions.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Trace: A research media player measuring real-time audience engagement.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Attentional engagement is a major determinant of how effectively we gather information through our senses. Alongside the sheer growth in the amount and variety of information content that we are presented with through modern media, there is increased variability in the degree to which we "absorb" that information. Traditional research on attention has illuminated the basic principles of sensory selection to isolated features or locations, but it provides little insight into the neural underpinnings of our attentional engagement with modern naturalistic content. Here, we show in human subjects that the reliability of an individual's neural responses with respect to a larger group provides a highly robust index of the level of attentional engagement with a naturalistic narrative stimulus. Specifically, fast electroencephalographic evoked responses were more strongly correlated across subjects when naturally attending to auditory or audiovisual narratives than when attention was directed inward to a mental arithmetic task during stimulus presentation. This effect was strongest for audiovisual stimuli with a cohesive narrative and greatly reduced for speech stimuli lacking meaning. For compelling audiovisual narratives, the effect is remarkably strong, allowing perfect discrimination between attentional state across individuals. Control experiments rule out possible confounds related to altered eye movement trajectories or order of presentation. We conclude that reliability of evoked activity reproduced across subjects viewing the same movie is highly sensitive to the attentional state of the viewer and listener, which is aided by a cohesive narrative.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.