Brain's Active Role in Creating Mental 'Chapters' Revealed
2024-12-19
A new study in Current Biology unveils how the brain segments the continuous stream of daily experiences into distinct, meaningful events. This 'event segmentation' isn't just a passive response to environmental changes; it's an active process shaped by internal scripts based on past experiences and goals. Researchers used audio narratives and fMRI to demonstrate that brain activity, particularly in the medial prefrontal cortex of the default mode network, aligns with event boundaries determined by prioritized scripts. This active construction of mental 'chapters' is crucial for understanding, memory formation, and prioritizing information.