Extrinsic and intrinsic systems in the posterior cortex of the human brain revealed during natural sensory stimulation

When exposing subjects to a continuous segment of an audiovisual movie, a large expanse of human cortex, especially in the posterior half of the cerebral cortex, shows stimulus-driven activity. However, embedded within this widespread activity, there are cortical regions whose activity is dissociated from the external stimulation. These regions are intercorrelated among themselves, forming a functional network, which largely overlaps with cortical areas previously shown to be deactivated by task-oriented paradigms. Moreover, the network of areas whose neuronal dynamics are associated with external inputs and the network of areas that appears to be intrinsically driven complement each other, providing coverage of most of the posterior cortex. Thus, we propose that naturalistic stimuli reveal a fundamental neuroanatomical partition of the human posterior cortex into 2 global networks: an extrinsic system, comprising areas associated with the processing of external inputs, and an intrinsic system, largely overlapping with the task-negative, default-mode network, comprising areas associated with-as yet not fully understood-intrinsically oriented functions.