Neuroscientists Say Film Content, Editing, and Directing Can Affect Brain Activity

By James Devitt

Using advanced functional imaging methods, NYU neuroscientists have found that certain motion pictures can exert considerable control over brain activity, and the impact of films varies according to movie content, editing, and directing style. The study, which appears in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, offers a quantitative neuroscientific assessment of the impact of different filmmaking styles and may serve as a valuable way for the film industry to better assess its products.

      The study’s authors are Uri Hasson, Barbara Knappmeyer, Nava Rubin, and David  Heeger, who hold appointments in the Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science; Ohad Landesman, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts; and Ignacio Vallines, a research scientist at the University of Munich.

      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 scanner—like that routinely used for clinical evaluation of human anatomy—but reprogrammed to get a time-series of three-dimensional images of brain activity. 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.

      “In cinema, some films lead most viewers through a similar sequence of perceptual, emotional, and cognitive states,” the researchers wrote. “Such a tight grip on viewers’ minds will be reflected in the similarity of the brain activity—or high ISC—across most viewers. By contrast, other films exert—either intentionally or unintentionally—less control over viewers’ responses during movie watching.”

      To stimulate subjects’ brain activity, the researchers showed them three motion picture clips: 30 minutes of Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and an episode of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. To establish a baseline, subjects viewed a 10-minute, unedited, one-shot video filmed during a concert in Washington Square Park.

      The results showed that the ISC of responses in subjects’ neocortex—the portion of the brain responsible for perception and cognition—differed across the four movies. The Hitchcock episode evoked similar responses across all viewers in over 65 percent of the neocortex, indicating a high level of control on viewers’ minds, and high ISC was also extensive (45 percent) for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Lower ISC was recorded for Curb Your Enthusiasm (18 percent) and for the Washington Square Park, or unstructured, reality clip (less than 5 percent).

      “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.’ ”

      However, the researchers emphasized that low and high ISC does not necessarily imply that the viewers were not attentive to or not engaged with the events in those films.

      “ISC measures only the ability of the filmmaker to evoke similar responses across all viewers,” they wrote. “Similar brain activity across viewers, or high ISC, can be taken as an indication that all viewers process and perceive the movie in a similar manner. Variability in the brain activity across viewers—that is, low ISC—can be due to either a less engaged processing of the incoming information, which occurs when daydreaming, or due to an intensely engaged but variable processing of a movie sequence.”

      For example, they add, an art film may demand an intense intellectual effort from viewers that differs from one viewer to the next, resulting in differences in neural activity.

      Apart from the findings, the study points to a new method 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 note 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 viewer engagement.