We found this brain-network renders subjective experience from multiple predictive modules, explaining why people can share a reality based on how their brains predict.
We tested how moment-to-moment experience evolves by analysing brain scans of people while they saw a movie/heard a story. Results suggest subjective experience/phenomenal consciousness is not just passive sensory input. A brain network called the default-mode network (DMN) runs three parallel predictive modules in midline prefrontal cortex, dedicated to contextual, social, and temporal information. These modules update predictions continually, and their outputs are blended with sensory data, giving a single, unified “now.”
People with more similar prediction patterns had similar experience, than with ones having different prediction profiles.
We suspect this provides some fresh insight into how brains create shared realities and personal differences, pointing toward new models of human cognition.
Paper
Fragmentation and multithreading of experience in the default-mode network
We found this brain-network renders subjective experience from multiple predictive modules, explaining why people can share a reality based on how their brains predict.
We tested how moment-to-moment experience evolves by analysing brain scans of people while they saw a movie/heard a story. Results suggest subjective experience/phenomenal consciousness is not just passive sensory input. A brain network called the default-mode network (DMN) runs three parallel predictive modules in midline prefrontal cortex, dedicated to contextual, social, and temporal information. These modules update predictions continually, and their outputs are blended with sensory data, giving a single, unified “now.”
People with more similar prediction patterns had similar experience, than with ones having different prediction profiles.
We suspect this provides some fresh insight into how brains create shared realities and personal differences, pointing toward new models of human cognition.
Paper
Fragmentation and multithreading of experience in the default-mode network
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63522-y