The neural correlates of shared and individual experience

Contemporary neuroscience research typically focuses on shared contents of experience and common neural states. Conversely, we set out to explore the neural correlates of individual-specific experiences that shape the distinct traits of each person. We propose an approach through which we compute individual-specific dynamics of functional connectivity states. These dynamics do not require estimation of common states across individuals and can be directly related to dynamic behavioural ratings of subjective experience. To this end, we leverage a unique functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset where subjects listened to an engaging naturalistic story while awake and under different levels of anaesthesia, altering or abolishing conscious experience. We find that this method can detect correspondences between neural and subjective dynamics. We then show that the dynamics of the default mode network underlie more personal experiences of the story as they are more dissimilar between participants during awareness compared to unconsciousness. On the other hand, the auditory and posterior dorsal attention networks show higher inter-subject similarity in consciousness compared to unconsciousness and suggest that the dynamics of these networks support more generalisable experiences of the story. We further characterise individual-specific brain dynamics by showing that they are associated with higher complexity in consciousness, whilst conversely, brain dynamics underlying shared experience become less complex during the conscious experience of the story.