Narrative ‘twist’ shifts within-individual neural representations of dissociable story features

Given the same external input, one’s understanding of that input can differ based on internal contextual knowledge. Where and how does the brain represent latent belief frameworks that interact with incoming sensory information to shape subjective interpretations? In this study, participants listened to the same auditory narrative twice, with a plot twist in the middle that dramatically shifted their interpretations of the story. Using a robust within-subject whole-brain approach, we leveraged shifts in neural activity between the two listens to identify where latent interpretations are represented in the brain. We considered the narrative in terms of its hierarchical structure, examining how global situation models and their subcomponents–namely, episodes and characters–are represented, finding that they rely on partially distinct sets of brain regions. Results suggest that our brains represent narratives hierarchically, with individual narrative elements being distinct and dynamically updated as a part of changing interpretations of incoming information.