June 06, 2008
Movies and the Mind
Movies affect different people differently. It seems like such a trite and unscientific thing to say. However, a new study appearing in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind offers a quantitative neuroscientific assessment of the impact of different styles of filmmaking on viewers' brains, it may serve as a valuable method for the film industry to better assess its products and offer a new method for exploring how the brain works.
Using advanced functional imaging methods, New York University neuroscientists have found that certain motion pictures can exert considerable control over brain activity. Moreover, the impact of films varies according to movie content, editing, and directing style.
The researchers relied on two methodological tools in their study: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis. fMRI utilizes a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner—like that routinely used for clinical evaluation of human anatomy. But it is reprogrammed to get a time-series of three-dimensional images of brain activity. In a typical fMRI experiment, a time-series of brain activity images is collected while a stimulus or cognitive task is varied. ISC analysis is employed to measure similarities in brain activity across viewers—in this case, it compared the response in each brain region from one viewer to the response in the same brain region from other viewers. Because all viewers were exposed to the same films, computing ISC on a region-by-region basis identified brain regions in which the responses were similar across viewers.
To stimulate subjects' brain activity, the researchers showed them three motion picture clips: thirty minutes of Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"; an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents "Bang! You're Dead"; and an episode of Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm." To establish a baseline, subjects viewed a clip of unstructured reality: a 10-minute, unedited, one-shot video filmed during a concert in New York City's Washington Square Park.
"Our data suggest that achieving a tight control over viewers' brains during a movie requires, in most cases, intentional construction of the film's sequence through aesthetic means," the researchers wrote. "The fact that Hitchcock was able to orchestrate the responses of so many different brain regions, turning them on and off at the same time across all viewers, may provide neuroscientific evidence for his notoriously famous ability to master and manipulate viewers' minds. Hitchcock often liked to tell interviewers that for him 'creation is based on an exact science of audience reactions.' "
Apart from the findings, the study points to a new method—inter-subject correlation (ISC) of brain activity—for measuring the effect of films on viewers' minds, which may pave the way to an innovative approach the researchers label "neurocinematic" studies. While they add that a cognitive science analysis of film is not new, functional imaging methods may be of use to both film theorists and the film industry by providing a quantitative, neuroscientific assessment of viewers' engagement with a film.