Movie-watching is a central aspect of our lives and an important paradigm for understanding the brain mechanisms behind cognition as it occurs in daily life. Contemporary views of ongoing thought argue that the ability to make sense of events in the ‘here and now’ depend on the neural processing of incoming sensory information by auditory and visual cortex, which are kept in check by systems in association cortex. However, we currently lack an understanding of how patterns of ongoing thoughts map onto the different brain systems when we watch a film, partly because methods of sampling experience disrupt the dynamics of brain activity and the experience of movie-watching. Our study established a novel method for mapping thought patterns onto the brain activity that occurs at different moments of a film, which does not disrupt the time course of brain activity or the movie-watching experience. We found moments when experience sampling highlighted engagement with multi-sensory features of the film or highlighted thoughts with episodic features, regions of sensory cortex were more active and subsequent memory for events in the movie was better—on the other hand, periods of intrusive distraction emerged when activity in regions of association cortex within the frontoparietal system was reduced. These results highlight the critical role sensory systems play in the multi-modal experience of movie-watching and provide evidence for the role of association cortex in reducing distraction when we watch films.

Dendrites are crucial for receiving information into neurons. Sensory experience affects the structure of these tree-like neurites, which, it is assumed, modifies neuronal function, yet the evidence is scarce, and the mechanisms are unknown. To study whether sensory experience affects dendritic morphology, we use the Caenorhabditis elegans' arborized nociceptor PVD neurons, under natural mechanical stimulation induced by physical contacts between individuals. We found that mechanosensory signals induced by conspecifics and by glass beads affect the dendritic structure of the PVD. Moreover, developmentally isolated animals show a decrease in their ability to respond to harsh touch. The structural and behavioral plasticity following sensory deprivation are functionally independent of each other and are mediated by an array of evolutionarily conserved mechanosensory amiloride-sensitive epithelial sodium channels (degenerins). Calcium imaging of the PVD neurons in a micromechanical device revealed that controlled mechanical stimulation of the body wall produces similar calcium dynamics in both isolated and crowded animals. Our genetic results, supported by optogenetic, behavioral, and pharmacological evidence, suggest an activity-dependent homeostatic mechanism for dendritic structural plasticity, that in parallel controls escape response to noxious mechanosensory stimuli.