Domain-specific and domain-general neural responses to surprising psychological and physical events

Why do babies look longer when they see an object pass through a solid wall, or a person act inefficiently, during violation-of-expectation (VOE) studies? Here we test two non-mutually exclusive hypotheses: (i) VOE involves domain-general processes, like visual prediction error, and curiosity about the source of surprise. (ii) VOE involves domain-specific processes, like prediction error over distinctively physical and psychological expectations (objects fall; agents behave rationally). In a pre-registered experiment, we scanned 32 adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they watched videos of agents and objects, adapted from infant behavioral research. Early visual regions responded equally to surprising and expected events in both domains, providing evidence against domain-general visual prediction error. Some multiple demand regions, that are engaged when people deploy goal-directed attention, responded more to surprising events from both domains, providing evidence for domain-general endogenous attention. Domain-specific regions, that prefer stimuli involving agents vs objects more broadly, showed similar preferences for the current videos of agents and objects. One region implicated in physical reasoning responded selectively to unexpected events from the physical domain, providing evidence for domain-specific physical prediction error. Thus, in adult brains, both domain-specific and high-level domain-general regions encode violation-of-expectation involving agents and objects, paving the way towards future developmental work.