In-scanner thoughts contribute to resting-state functional connectivity

Area of Science:

• Neuroimaging
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI) is crucial for identifying functional connectivity (FC) abnormalities in clinical populations.
• Standard rsfMRI analysis controls for demographic and motion artifacts but often overlooks the influence of participants' inner experiences.
• Systematic differences in subjective experience during scans may confound FC interpretations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of in-scanner subjective experiences on rsfMRI functional connectivity (FC) measures.
• To determine if experiential profiles are stable, subject-specific traits.
• To assess the predictive power of FC for experiential dimensions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a dataset of 469 rsfMRI scans with retrospective experiential annotations.
• Analyzed summary descriptors of in-scanner experience for reproducibility and subject-specificity.
• Examined FC differences associated with distinct experiential profiles and FC's predictive capacity for experience.

Main Results:

• In-scanner experiential descriptors were found to be reproducible across visits and subject-specific, suggesting trait-like qualities.
• Significant differences in FC were observed between scans with varying reported experiential profiles.
• Functional connectivity predicted specific experiential dimensions with performance comparable to demographic, cognitive, and clinical variables.

Conclusions:

• In-scanner subjective experience plays a critical role in shaping rsfMRI functional connectivity (FC) findings.
• These findings emphasize the need to incorporate experiential data for more accurate rsfMRI interpretation.
• The study highlights stable experiential tendencies rather than moment-to-moment state-dependent relationships.