Peer-reviewed article
On the Same Wavelength: The Relationship between Neural Synchrony and Cognitive Ability during Movie Watching in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence.
Lyons KM, Saljoughi S, Ho W, Owen AM, Stevenson RA et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how cognitive ability relates to brain activity patterns in children and adolescents aged 7-15 while they watched a movie. Researchers used brain imaging to measure neural synchrony—how similar brain activity was across different viewers. They found that adolescents with higher cognitive scores showed greater brain synchrony in specific networks, while younger children with high scores showed synchrony only in different brain regions. The results suggest that cognitive development involves changes in how children process complex real-world experiences.
Key points
- 309 children and adolescents aged 7-15 participated in the study
- Adolescents with higher cognitive scores showed greater neural synchrony in default mode and frontoparietal networks
- Younger children with high cognitive scores showed increased synchrony only in somatosensory regions
- Brain activity patterns during naturalistic movie watching differ by age and cognitive ability
- Neural processing of complex stimuli changes across late childhood and early adolescence
Limitations
This study is purely observational and does not measure actual child well-being outcomes or longitudinal development; it only describes associations between brain activity patterns and test scores at a single time point. The sample was predominantly White, which limits generalisability to other populations.
Abstract
Introduction Cognitive development in late childhood and adolescence occurs alongside increasingly complex environments. The current study examined how cognitive abilities relate to neural processing of naturalistic experiences. Methods We analyzed fMRI data from 309 children and adolescents (ages 7-15; majority White) in the Healthy Brain Biobank. Participants watched a 10-min clip of Despicable Me during scanning and completed the WISC. Intersubject correlation (ISC) was used to measure brain synchrony during viewing. Results Adolescents [1-5] with higher cognitive scores showed greater ISC in default mode and frontoparietal networks. In contrast, younger children [1, 6-9] with high scores showed increased between-subject synchrony only in somatosensory regions. Conclusions These findings suggest age- and cognition-related differences in how children and adolescents process complex, real-world stimuli.