{
  "abstract": "Understanding how the brain processes the everyday world is fundamental, yet laboratory paradigms exclude self-generated movement, unscripted events, and a continuously evolving multisensory environment. Wearable neuroimaging enables real-world measurement, but linking neural activity to uncontrolled sensory information remains challenging. Here, we extend a feature-based framework from naturalistic movie viewing to everyday behavior using wearable whole-head high-density fNIRS and participant-specific audiovisual recordings during movies and outdoor walking with no explicit task or scripted audiovisual sequence. Luminance- and sound-related cortical maps showed significant spatial correspondence, particularly in visual and auditory regions, whereas face-related correspondence was weaker. Luminance- and face-related maps were reproducible within individuals across repeated walks. Additional exploratory analysis demonstrated, to our knowledge, the first out-of-sample encoding of continuous environmental features during unconstrained real-world fNIRS, predicting cortical activity during held-out walking periods. Together, these findings establish a feature-based framework for linking cortical activity to naturally unfolding sensory experience in everyday behavior.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "M. Altınkaynak"
    },
    {
      "name": "L. B. Carlton"
    },
    {
      "name": "E. Topkoc"
    },
    {
      "name": "D. A. Boas"
    },
    {
      "name": "M. A. Yücel"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4hhcqahby746b.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.09.29.754498",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.754498v1.full",
  "id": "4hhcqahby746b",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.754498v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "neuroscience"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2805|Neural dynamics and brain function"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7220737597",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.754498v1.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-29",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4hhcqahby746b.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:26:16Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.09.29.754498",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.754498v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:neuroscience",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "The Walking Brain: Mapping feature-specific cortical responses to naturally unfolding sensory experience in the real world",
  "title_text": "The Walking Brain: Mapping feature-specific cortical responses to naturally unfolding sensory experience in the real world",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:26:16Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/4hhcqahby746b",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}