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bioRxiv2026

Detection of Frustration-related Operant Behavior in Rats via Machine Learning Methods

Despite its strong link to neuropsychiatric conditions, frustration remains critically understudied in humans and animals alike. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop tools to understand and therapeutically target frustration-related functions. Interestingly, humans and rats respond similarly during frustrative nonreward by increasing barpress durations. We previously validated barpress duration in rat operant tasks as a reliable measure of frustration-related behavior; however, it is wellknown that in addition to duration of responding, emotional states such as frustration alter other aspects of responding such as force of pressing. One-dimensional, static measures such as maximum force could miss rich information contained within operant data. Thus, the objective of this study is to apply machine learning (ML) to force/time profiles to discriminate frustration-related barpresses from non-frustration-related barpresses. Results showed an AUROC for FR1 (i.e., non-frustrated) vs. extinction (frustrated condition) for individual barpresses of 0.65 that improved to 0.84 with a chunk size of 10. The model generalized well to progressive ratio responding, a different kind of frustration procedure. We conclude that force/time profiling does provide utility beyond one dimensional measures of duration or force separately, meaning that we can indeed infer the internal state of frustration from behavior using ML techniques. Importantly, this project will also serve as proof-of-concept for applying ML to predict other internal states from barpress data.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2026

Autism-risk gene mutations convergently disrupt sexually dimorphic oxytocin circuits to lower social engagement

Autism arises from diverse genetic risk factors, yet how they converge to produce core symptoms and contribute to its sex bias remains unestablished. Oxytocin increases sociability in multiple murine autism models, presenting an opportunity to identify a potentially shared mechanistic basis across etiologies. Here we show that spontaneous social investigation triggers overlapping patterns of aberrant functional connectivity across social and sensory brain regions in two knockout (KO) mouse models, which are rescued by oxytocin. We also report that, during social investigation, wildtype mice exhibit sexually dimorphic oxytocin release and neuronal activity dynamics in the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala. These patterns are disrupted in both KO models, but can be restored by sex- and circuit-specific stimulation of endogenous oxytocin release, accompanied by enhanced social engagement. These findings identify impaired oxytocin recruitment of sexually dimorphic social circuits as a convergent consequence of autism-risk gene mutations that may underlie low sociability.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2026

Exploring rhythmic and melodic preferences in budgerigars: Individual and possible sex-related variation

Budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) are vocal-learning birds with well-developed auditory abilities, but how they behaviorally evaluate melodic and rhythmic structure in sound sequences remains unclear. We examined whether budgerigars show preferences for these acoustic features and whether such preferences differ between the sexes. Three male and three female budgerigars were presented with four 8-s sound sequences in a preference apparatus: Simple (no pitch or temporal variation), Melody (pitch variation only), Rhythm (temporal variation only), and Complex (both pitch and temporal variation). Preference was quantified as the time spent in the area associated with each stimulus. No statistically significant differences among the four stimuli were detected within individuals. However, effect-size estimates indicated that two females spent more time with sequences containing rhythmic structure, whereas males showed no consistent preference related to either melodic or rhythmic components. Multidimensional scaling further suggested greater separation among stimulus conditions in females than in males. Consistent with this pattern, condition differentiation indices were higher in all three females than in all three males, although the sex difference was not statistically significant. These results suggest a possible sex-related difference in how budgerigars behaviorally weight temporal structure, with females showing greater differentiation among auditory sequence types under the present testing conditions.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2026

Rapid phase resetting of Aedes aegypti circadian rhythms by transient alterations in light exposure

Circadian clocks enable mosquitoes to anticipate recurring environmental variations and coordinate behaviors critical for survival and disease transmission, such as locomotion, reproduction, host-seeking, and blood-feeding, with times of day when performance is maximal. In Aedes aegypti, locomotor activity follows a robust diurnal rhythm shaped by endogenous circadian clocks and environmental cues, among which light has been shown to be the primary source of temporal information. While early studies established the role of light in regulating locomotor activity, behavior, oviposition and pupation, it remains unclear which features of a light cycle drive changes in circadian rhythms. This question is increasingly relevant as Ae. aegypti is frequently exposed to artificial and dynamic lighting conditions in urban environments. Here, we investigated how transient changes in light schedules influence circadian rhythms in locomotor activity by systematically manipulating the timing, duration, and direction of light exposure. Using a high-throughput assay, we tested over 1900 individuals, including wild-type and timeless knockout mutants, and showed that a single day of al tered lighting is sufficient to induce robust phase shifts, with no evidence of masking effects. A 6-hour light pulse was sufficient to re-entrain mosquitoes regardless of the timing of the pulse, and phase shifts were primarily driven by the offset time of the light pulse, indicating that light-offset acts as a major zeitgeber. Together, these findings challenge conventional assumptions about the timescale of circadian synchronization and highlight the remarkable plasticity of mosquito behavior in response to anthropogenic light. Eventually, these effects could explain the rapid adaptation of the species to urban environments and have potential consequences for disease transmission dynamics.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2026

Who rests with whom? Sex composition and group demography shape resting associations in free-ranging dogs

Free-ranging dogs frequently rest near conspecifics, but the demographic factors structuring their resting associations remain poorly understood. We quantified dyadic resting associations in 26 free-ranging dog groups in West Bengal, India, observed between 2019 and 2023. Association strength was estimated from scan based resting co-occurrences using the Half-Weight Index. We tested whether dyadic association strength varied with dyad sex composition, dyad life stage composition, group size, and group sex ratio using a generalised additive model for location, scale and shape that accounted for group identity and repeated occurrence of individuals across dyads. Male-male dyads had lower association strengths than female-female dyads, whereas mixed-sex dyads did not differ from female-female dyads. Association strength decreased with increasing group size but increased as the male-to-female ratio within the group increased, while life-stage composition had no detectable effect. Individual level network metrics, including strength, reach, clustering coefficient, affinity, and eigenvector centrality, did not vary with sex or season. Mixed-sex pairs were also frequently represented among the strongest dyadic associations within groups. These findings indicate that resting associations in free-ranging dogs vary with dyad sex composition and group demography. Further opportunity-controlled analyses are required to determine whether the prominence of mixed-sex dyads reflects preferential association rather than group composition alone.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2026

Copulation calls indicate fertility but do not reflect female mate competition in wild Guinea baboons

Across different modalities, signals play a core role in attracting mates and influencing mating success. In several non-human primate species, females produce calls during mating that are thought to promote male competition over receptive females. The extent to which social system characteristics modulate the function of copulation calls remains less clear. We studied copulation calls in wild Guinea baboons (Papio papio), who live in a multilevel society structured around units in which females associate and mate almost exclusively with a single male. We hypothesised that females use copulation calls as an indirect form of mate competition, with competition increasing in larger units. In addition, we hypothesised that females are more likely to mate again after calling. We analysed 6116 copulations between 2014 and 2025, involving 99 reproductively active females and 78 subadult and adult males. Females produced copulation calls in 72.7% of copulations, with large inter-individual variation. Neither unit size nor its interaction with the female's swelling size or the presence of simultaneously receptive females affected the probability of calling. A survival analysis with a subset of the data (2353 copulations) revealed no effect of calling on the latency to the next mating. Our results render the hypothesis that female Guinea baboons use calls in indirect mate competition unlikely. Yet, the probability of calling varied with sexual swelling size, suggesting that calls signal female fertility. Possibly, Guinea baboon copulation calls represent an evolutionary remnant, no longer under selective pressure, and can be considered index signals of female fertility.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2026

An adolescent neuroimaging database combining movie-watching, eye-tracking and cognitive tasks

Adolescence is a critical period of neurodevelopment, yet most neuroimaging datasets focus on adult populations, leaving a gap in our understanding of how the brain processes information during this formative stage. Here we present a multimodal neuroimaging dataset acquired from 41 adolescent participants aged 11-18 years, combining 3T fMRI data with concurrent eye-tracking and physiological monitoring during naturalistic movie-watching. Data are shared in BIDS-compliant format and technical validation demonstrates good data quality across participants, with low head motion and strong inter-subject neural synchronisation during movie-watching. In addition to the scanning session, participants completed remote assessments covering a broad range of self-reported developmental and mental health traits, alongside cognitive tasks targeting reward-based and social learning. This dataset offers a rich resource for studying the adolescent brain, with particular utility for research on individual differences in mental health and cognition. All data and processing code is openly available to facilitate reproducible science.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

A cognitive representation in primary visual cortex modulated by vision

Primary visual cortex (V1) is a critical substrate for mammalian vision. Traditionally, visual inputs are thought to be the main drivers of V1 activity, with internal signals playing a modulatory role. Here we show that this relationship is inverted for a large fraction of V1 neurons. In rats completing a navigation task in darkness, these neurons encoded progress along physically distinct paths with a shared turn structure. Under illumination, visual stimuli gain-modulated this path-invariant activity rather than replacing it with stimulus-driven responses. Path-invariant V1 neurons were also preferentially coordinated with hippocampal ensembles during sharp-wave ripples, linking them to a brain-wide network involved in learning. These findings establish that an internal model of the world can serve as a primary driver of activity in sensory cortex.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Sport expertise and motor imagery abilities shape sensorimotor rhythm modulations during visualisation tasks: Implications for neurofeedback-based cognitive training in athletes

Kinaesthetic motor imagery (kMI) is widely used in sport to enhance motor performance by engaging cortical sensorimotor networks. Neurofeedback may further support kMI, but the optimal neural target to reinforce remains unclear. Maximal sensorimotor event-related desynchronisation (SMR-ERD) represents a relevant target as it may index sensorimotor cortex engagement, yet sport expertise has been associated with reduced SMR-ERD, potentially reflecting neural efficiency. The optimal neurofeedback target may therefore depend on sport expertise, movement expertise, and individual kMI ability. This study examined how these factors influence sensorimotor activity during kMI. We compared 17 basketball players (Experts) and 16 individuals without formal basketball training (Novices). kMI ability and frequency of use were assessed using questionnaires, while SMR-ERD was quantified using electroencephalography (EEG) during kMI. Participants imagined either a basketball-specific movement (Free throw), for which only Experts had extensive experience, or a generic movement (Box lifting), familiar to both groups. Experts reported greater kMI ability and more frequent kMI use than Novices. Only Experts exhibited significant and sustained SMR-ERD during kMI. Moreover, SMR-ERD was stronger in Experts than Novices specifically during Free throw kMI, corresponding to their movement of expertise. Nonetheless, within the Expert group, higher kMI ability was associated with reduced SMR-ERD. These findings suggest that sport expertise initially enhances voluntary recruitment of sensorimotor networks during kMI, whereas greater kMI ability may subsequently promote neural efficiency, resulting in reduced overall sensorimotor cortical activation. These results highlight the need to tailor kMI-based neurofeedback training to users' sport expertise and kMI ability levels.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Aberrant accumulation of α-synuclein might be linked with the progressive motor deficits in a mouse model of Angelman syndrome

Dysfunction of maternal UBE3A leads to Angelman syndrome (AS), which is characterized by significant intellectual and motor debilities. However, the molecular underpinnings of the behavioral deficits associated with UBE3A dysfunction remain obscure. In this study, we utilized a model mouse of AS and report, for the first time, that the aberrant accumulation of -synuclein may be linked to the development of AS. Firstly, we demonstrated a progressive deterioration of various motor functions in AS mice beginning from the early adolescent phase. Subsequently, we observed an age-dependent increase in the accumulation of both soluble and insoluble -synuclein, including its pathological variant (pSer129), in the striatum and substantia nigra dopaminergic neurons of AS mice. We also found that Ube3a interacts with -synuclein and promotes its proteasome-mediated degradation, as evidenced by decreased levels of K48-linked polyubiquitinated -synuclein in the brain samples of AS mice in comparison to wild-type animals. Finally, using an RT2 Profiler PCR Array that analysed 84 genes specifically related to dopamine and serotonin pathways, we identified altered transcript level of various genes in the striatal tissues of AS mice that are commonly associated with nigrostriatal dysfunctions in Parkinson's disease. These findings highlight -synuclein as a novel target of Ube3a and suggest that -synuclein pathology may contribute to the progressive motor and other behavioral abnormalities witnessed in AS mice.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Structural characteristics of important daily movement corridors for waterbirds in urban areas: A case study on Black-headed Gulls

Landscape management facilitating animal movement is essential for sustaining urban wildlife populations and ecosystem services. Although linear vegetation corridors effectively conserve terrestrial animal movements, it remains unclear which landscape elements serve as pathways for aquatic organisms. Urban waterbirds frequently utilize rivers, but the specific characteristics that render certain river segments crucial as movement corridors have yet to be elucidated. This study aims to identify the characteristics of river segments functioning as critical corridors based on waterbird movement strategies. We tracked the movement behaviors of the Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus), a river-dependent species in daily movements, and identified key movement corridors in highly urbanized Tokyo, Japan. Using GPS tracking data from gulls, we evaluated how river sinuosity and surrounding feature heights influenced tendencies to follow rivers across various temporal scales and perceptual ranges. Furthermore, we predicted and mapped these tendencies across individual river segments in central Tokyo. Gulls tended to fly along river segments with tall features during instantaneous to mid-term decision-making. In contrast, they utilized straight channels for long-term decisions. Although results varied slightly depending on the spatial scale they can perceive, this overarching trend remained consistent. Furthermore, our model predicted that the lower reaches of the Sumida River serve as critical movement corridors. This predictive tendency was also highly robust across all time scales. While straightened river segments with high feature heights may provide unsuitable habitats for diverse taxa, we emphasize their ecological value and argue that they should be conserved as essential movement corridors for waterbirds.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2026

Spatial profiling and neurovascular communication in the developing and adolescent cortex following prenatal alcohol exposure

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) constitute a wide range of developmental, cognitive, and behavioral impairments caused by prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE). Although neuronal and vascular consequences of PAE have been studied, how alcohol affects the cerebrovasculature within the framework of the neurovascular unit (NVU) across development remains poorly understood. At minimum, the NVU comprises neurons, astrocyte endfeet, and endothelial cells (ECs), which coordinate to maintain brain homeostasis. Here, we used the NanoString Digital Spatial Profiling platform to characterize spatial transcriptomic data from neurons, astrocytes, and ECs from PAE and saccharin (SAC) control cortices at embryonic day 18 (E18) and postnatal day 28 (P28). Differentially expressed genes were then used for Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) to identify altered biological pathways and perform comparison analyses across developmental time points, while CellChat was used to infer cell cell communication networks. We uncovered thousands of differentially expressed genes and numerous altered pathways and biological processes in PAE cortices across development. Both IPA and CellChat analyses implicated dysregulation of vascular and extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling, cell adhesion, and neuroinflammatory signaling. CellChat further predicted the loss of several key bidirectional relationships and altered ligand-receptor interactions among neurovascular cell types at E18 and P28. Overall, these findings identify PAE associated alterations in neurovascular gene expression and intercellular signaling across development, providing potential mechanisms by which PAE may disrupt neurodevelopment.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2026

Layer 5 anterior cingulate cortical neurons engage dorsolateral periaqueductal gray excitatory neurons to facilitate the affective component of pain

Pain is a conscious perceptual experience characterized by its aversive quality and consequent motivation to quench pain perception. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) critically contributes to the emotional dimension of pain. In both humans and rodents, ACC neural activity increases during acute and chronic pain, whereas ACC lesioning or excitability reduction decreases emotional reactivity during pain. However, the ACC is connected to many brain regions and is engaged during experiences beyond pain. Thus, it remains unclear through which circuit mechanisms the ACC shapes pain experience, and how specific those circuits are to nociception. Here, we show that excitatory input from the ACC to the dorsolateral periaqueductal gray (dlPAG) facilitates the affective-motivational dimension of pain. We first examined ACC[->]dlPAG connectivity using histology, optogenetics, and electrophysiology. We found that the axons of layer 5 ACC neurons terminate in the dlPAG and monosynaptically excite Slc17a6+ (VGLUT2-expressing) dlPAG neurons. Second, we genetically targeted ACC[->]dlPAG neurons with viral vectors to express the inhibitory DREADD hM4Di and then exposed the animals to an array of pain tests. We found that, across acute and chronic pain states, inhibition of the ACC[->]dlPAG pathway reduced affective-motivational but not reflexive pain behaviors. Third, we used fiber photometry to record neural calcium activity in the ACC in behaving mice and found that ACC[->]dlPAG neurons are engaged during a broad array of aversive experiences, rather than exclusively during pain, and exhibit task-specific activity patterns. Collectively, these results uncover the direct contribution of ACC[->]dlPAG neural activity to pain unpleasantness and the necessity of this pathway for generating aversive behavioral responses in general, rather than specifically for encoding the unpleasant quality of noxious stimuli.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Observational satiety: watching yourself eat induces more fullness than watching another

Appetite is shaped not only by physiological need but by the sensory experience of eating and its social context. Can watching food being eaten itself induce satiety, and does it matter who is seen eating? In a functional MRI study (N = 41), participants watched videos of a wanted snack being eaten from their own perspective (self) or, using identical footage shown vertically inverted, as another's (other), holding food identity and visual content constant so that only the attributed agent varied. Observed eating reduced wanting, but not liking, for the eaten foods, whether one's own or another's; crucially, reported fullness increased only when the eating was seen as one's own. In the brain, food-value regions responded to watching eating in both conditions, a shared signal that strengthened over time. Yet only self-attributed eating engaged a self-specific, value-related response in the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex, and orbitofrontal activity during self-eating scaled with each person's reported satiety, whereas watching another eat instead engaged the temporoparietal mentalizing network without a comparable rise in fullness. A large online survey (N = 1,000; ages 15-97) reproduced the behavioral effect across the adult lifespan, and a real-eating experiment reproduced its sensory-specific pattern. Watching eating, and whose eating it is, can thus recalibrate appetite through separate food-value and social-cognitive routes. This "observational satiety" offers a non-invasive route to study food wanting, of potential relevance to social eating and to today's food-media environments.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Rapid repurposing of microvillar content drives a flagellate-to-amoeboid switch in the closest relative of animals

Animal cells extensively remodel their cytoskeleton during differentiation and can notably switch between two major motility modes: flagellum-based swimming and actin-based crawling. We previously showed that choanoflagellates, the closest living relatives of animals and classically viewed as obligate flagellated swimmers, can retract their collar complex and adopt an amoeboid form within seconds under spatial confinement, independently of regulated gene expression. Here, using live imaging, ultrastructural expansion microscopy, and cryo-electron tomography in Salpingoeca rosetta, we identify rapid, cell-wide cytoskeletal remodeling as the ultrastructural basis of this switch. Unconfined choanoflagellates lack a detectable actin cortex but display an apical flagellum and cortical microtubules, with F-actin being largely restricted to microvilli. Confinement triggers calcium release from intracellular stores, which induces microvillar retraction and absorption of microvillar material into the cell body, including actin, ezrin-radixin-moesin 1, and plasma membrane. Remodeling of the internalized F-actin and repurposing of associated proteins supports de novo actin cortex formation, which is necessary for amoeboid motility. In parallel, cortical microtubules are disassembled, and the reabsorbed microvillar plasma membrane increases the surface area of the cell body, allowing the cell to flatten under confinement. Cryo-electron tomography reveals stepwise actin reorganization from internalized microvillar bundles to a cortical contractile meshwork combining bundles and scattered filaments. This work reveals considerable ultrastructural plasticity in the cytoskeletal architecture of choanoflagellates and supports an ancestral role for microvilli as reservoirs of membrane and cytoskeleton to potentiate cell phenotypic transitions.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2026

Wildlife disease surveillance under uncertainty: an adaptive search-theoretic framework for early detection of transboundary animal diseases

Rapid detection is critical for successful management of transboundary animal disease incursions in wild host populations. However, decisions about how best to allocate wildlife disease surveillance effort must be made under high uncertainty. Risk-based surveillance can improve efficiency but approaches that focus surveillance too narrowly on expected high risk areas could have low power to detect unexpected events. We developed and field-tested an adaptive, search-theoretic surveillance framework for detecting transboundary animal disease incursions in wild ungulates in New South Wales, Australia. Key principles that guided the frameworks development included accommodating uncertainty, regularly updating search priorities based on expected risk and spatial coverage, and a flexible structure that allows the system to respond to changing information or conditions over time. We created a coarse state-wide risk map that served as a weakly informative prior describing expected variability in disease incursion risk, loosely focused on foot and mouth disease virus (FMDv). Risk and search values were updated every three months based on realised surveillance effort and estimated detection probabilities over the preceding 12 months, meaning that areas of persistently high risk could nonetheless have low search value if they had recently been intensively searched. Surveillance activities collected blood and swab samples from 1,964 wild pigs (Sus scrofa) during 110 sampling occasions over a two-year evaluation and refinement period. Activities sought to simulate FMDv surveillance operations, but FMDv serological tests were not available at the time. Effort was consistently concentrated in areas of high search value, with at least 74% of sampled cells in the highest risk class. Estimated surveillance system sensitivity ranged from 0.86 to 0.93 over five successive updating cycles and increased as operational procedures were refined. Although the surveillance program was based on FMDv incursion risk, it also fulfilled its secondary objective of detecting unexpected events, including detecting Japanese encephalitis virus in wild pigs before detections in humans and domestic animals. By combining risk-based surveillance with adaptive updating of search priorities in a modular structure, the framework provided a flexible and generalisable approach for early detection of transboundary and emerging animal disease incursions in wildlife populations under high uncertainty.

zoology↗

bioRxiv2026

Bioengineering of Pea (Pisum sativum) for the Expression of Myoglobin, a Heme-containing Animal Protein

Myoglobin, an oxygen-binding animal protein, was engineered in Pisum sativum (pea) to explore its potential as a food ingredient and balance the amino acid profile. In this study, minimal expression cassettes and binary vectors were used to express bovine myoglobin using particle gun and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, respectively. Successful integration and expression of the myoglobin gene was achieved in P. sativum, with both methods yielding similar transformation efficiencies (~1%). Expression analysis of T2 seeds revealed that Agrobacterium-mediated transformation-derived transgenic lines that expressed myoglobin under the regulation of a Soybean 7S seed-specific promoter and Tobacco Etch Virus (TEV) translation enhancer and a chimeric Rb7MAR Terminator (Ps-BpRG13 events) consistently yielded the highest level of expression (0.32-1.57% of TSP), while transgenic lines with myoglobin expression under the regulation of a Soybean Phaseolin promoter and Rb7MAR Terminator (Ps-BpRG14 events) resulted in moderate levels of heterologous protein expression (0.13-0.83% TSP). Transgenic events with constitutive 2xCaMV35S promoter, TEV translation enhancer and Rb7MAR terminator (Ps-BpRG15 events) exhibited the lowest level of myoglobin expression (0.09-0.14% TSP). Co-bombardment of two minimal expression cassettes - one with myoglobin under the regulation of the Phaseolin promoter and Rb7MAR Terminator and the other with the nptII selectable marker under the regulation of a 2X constitutive CaMV35S promoter, TEV translational enhancer and TNOS Terminator, yielded lines that exhibited variable expression (0.03-0.77% TSP), with some events comparable in expression to Agrobacterium-derived Ps-pRG14 events. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of producing a heme-containing animal protein, myoglobin, in peas, with potential implications for sustainable production of food ingredients and nutritionally fortified and value-added plant products using molecular farming.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2026

Neural signatures of spontaneous transitions between internal and external thought

The human mind constantly shifts between internal representations and the external environment, yet the neural mechanisms underlying such spontaneous transitions remain underexplored. Here, we analyzed a think-aloud functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset, in which participants continuously verbalized their thoughts, to identify neural activity predicting transitions between internally and externally oriented thought. Internal-to-external transitions were preceded by increased activation in the salience/ventral attention network, with the strongest effect observed in the right temporoparietal junction. The spatial pattern of this pre-transition activation was positively associated with acetylcholine receptor density, suggesting a role for cholinergic signaling in cognitive reorientation. Pre-transition activation was itself preceded by a large-scale brain state proposed to serve as a flexible hub between functionally specialized states, indicating that spontaneous transitions are more likely when the brain occupies this intermediate configuration. Together, these findings suggest that multilevel neural mechanisms support flexible reorientation along the internal-external dimension of spontaneous cognition.

neuroscience↗