Science!

What an example of interdisciplinary scholarship: Film Content, Editing, and Directing Style Affect Brain Activity, NYU Neuroscientists Show. Ferreals! It's pretty cool. [OK, also creepy.] Here's a longish excerpt.

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. Because the study, which appears 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.

[snip]

"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. In such cases we expect that there will be less control over viewers' brain activity, resulting in low ISC.

"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.

The results showed that 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;
-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.' "

Frickin' Hitchcock.

Information about the original study may be found here. Now the cinetrix is wondering how she can use this power for awesome in the classroom....