Movie Watching for Individual Functional Brain Network Estimation in Adolescents

Abstract

Precision functional mapping (PFM) reveals stable individual differences in brain functional network organization and holds promise for advancing neuropsychiatric clinical care. PFM requires sufficient high-quality and densely-sampled functional MRI data at the individual level that is typically acquired during the so-called resting state while passively fixating on a crosshair. However, crosshair fixation acquisitions can be challenging especially for pediatric or patient populations, where alternatives like movie watching might be used to improve data quality and reduce participant burden. Here, we compare the use of resting state crosshair fixation and movie watching fMRI data to derive individual-specific functional brain network topography using PFM data (28-38 minutes of low-motion fMRI data per-participant per-condition) in nineteen adolescents (12-18 years) with a range of transdiagnostic psychiatric diagnoses. Network assignments were largely conserved between crosshair fixation and movie watching, with a smaller subset of reproducible network reassignments which were overwhelmingly border shifts between neighboring networks. This suggests largely conserved global structure of functional network topography between crosshair fixation and movie watching, though border shifts can compound into variable estimates of cortical network size particularly for movie positive (language, salience, and parietal memory) and movie negative networks (default mode, action mode). Functional network assignments derived from movies and crosshair were also similarly individual-specific and consistent within common neuromodulation targets including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and somatomotor cortex. Key results were replicated in independent pediatric consortia data (Healthy Brain Network, n = 466, 6-22 years) and reproduced across independent PFM data sessions. Acknowledging individual differences and level of analysis, we conclude that movies are a viable alternative to resting state crosshair fixation for individual network definitions.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 16 Oct 2026.

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