Although functional networks can be consistently identified across cognitive states, they also undergo dynamic reconfigurations across different contexts. For example, naturalistic movie watching paradigms amplify activity in sensory systems compared to resting conditions. However, it remains unclear how these different states affect large-scale brain organization. The current study leveraged high-resolution in vivo 7T fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and the Precision NeuroImaging (PNI) datasets to examine large scale functional connectivity changes between resting and movie-watching conditions. To understand these changes within topographic and geometric principles of brain organization, connectivity shifts were stratified relative to macroscale cortical hierarchy and geodesic distance. Our results revealed that primary sensory areas showed increased local connectivity and reduced long-range interactions during movie watching relative to resting conditions, whereas the default mode network (DMN) exhibited an opposing pattern characterized by reduced within-network long-range connectivity and enhanced connectivity with distant regions outside the DMN. Together, these findings demonstrate that different cognitive states involve geometry- and hierarchy-informed reorganization of large-scale functional networks.
Wang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.