Participants were seated in a comfortable recliner in a dimly lit, sound attenuated and electrically shielded room. hdEEG data were recorded during two resting states. To evaluate intrinsic neural activity, a standard resting state (S-RS) recording was conducted first, lasting 2 min while participants fixated on a crosshair on the screen. To assess the impact of environmental sensory input on α oscillations and DMN functioning, a M-RS recording was also conducted, involving 5 min of passively viewing a continuous stream of images (subtending a visual area of 7.8° × 5.8°), each for 333 ms. Images were chosen from the International Affective Picture System (Lang et al., 2008), depicting neutral (e.g., buildings, daily objects; n = 322), positive (e.g., erotic; n = 253), and negative (e.g., mutilation; n =346) scenes, randomly intermixed.
