Sinapsis - Episodio 6: Cine y Cerebro
Summary
TLDRHace casi 130 años, los hermanos Lumière presentaron su invento en París, cambiando para siempre la manera en que experimentamos las imágenes en movimiento. Este video explora cómo el cine afecta nuestra percepción y emociones, desde la activación de redes neuronales hasta la capacidad de manipular la atención. Se discuten estudios neurocientíficos pioneros que demuestran cómo las películas sincronizan la actividad cerebral de los espectadores, y se destaca la maestría de directores como Hitchcock en controlar nuestras mentes. El cine es una herramienta poderosa no solo para el entretenimiento, sino también para estudiar el cerebro y la mente.
Takeaways
- 🎬 Hace 130 años, los hermanos Lumière presentaron el cine al público en un café de París, cambiando para siempre la forma de contar historias.
- 🧠 Georges Méliès, presente en la primera proyección de cine, fue uno de los primeros en reconocer el potencial mágico del cine.
- 🧠 El neurocine analiza cómo el cine activa varias redes cerebrales, incluidas las visuales, auditivas, emocionales y de cognición social.
- 🧠 Un estudio pionero de Uri Hasson demostró que las películas pueden sincronizar la actividad cerebral y los movimientos oculares de los espectadores.
- 🎥 Alfred Hitchcock logró un control excepcional sobre la actividad cerebral de sus espectadores, logrando una sincronización del 70%.
- 🎥 La técnica de montaje cinematográfico puede manipular nuestra percepción de la continuidad temporal y espacial, como lo demuestran las obras de Griffith y Eisenstein.
- 🎞️ El cine usa técnicas como el montaje paralelo para crear tensión y expectativas, lo que genera fuertes reacciones emocionales en los espectadores.
- 🧠 Las investigaciones sugieren que la capacidad de empatía de una persona afecta cómo experimenta una película en compañía de otros.
- 🎬 El cine se asemeja al funcionamiento del cerebro, ya que ambos construyen una ilusión de continuidad a través de fragmentos y predicciones.
- 🎥 El cine ha sido una herramienta poderosa para estudiar el cerebro, activando nuestros sistemas sensoriales y emocionales, y manipulando la percepción.
Q & A
¿Qué evento histórico significativo ocurrió en un café de París en 1895?
-En 1895, los hermanos Lumière presentaron por primera vez al público su invento de proyección de imágenes en movimiento, incluyendo cortometrajes como 'La llegada de un tren a la estación de La Ciotat' y 'Salida de los obreros de la fábrica Lumière'. Este evento marcó el nacimiento del cine.
¿Quién fue Georges Méliès y qué papel jugó en el desarrollo del cine?
-Georges Méliès fue un mago y director de teatro presente en la primera proyección de los Lumière. Reconoció de inmediato el potencial del cine como un medio para crear 'magia' visual, lo que lo llevó a convertirse en uno de los primeros cineastas en experimentar con efectos especiales y técnicas narrativas.
¿Qué descubrimientos hizo el estudio de Uri Hasson sobre el impacto del cine en el cerebro?
-El estudio de Uri Hasson de 2004 mostró que los espectadores que veían la misma película, 'El bueno, el malo y el feo', sincronizaban sus patrones de actividad cerebral y movimientos oculares, lo que confirmó que el cine puede controlar considerablemente la atención y la actividad mental de los espectadores.
¿Qué película, según los estudios, generó mayor sincronización de la actividad cerebral en los espectadores?
-El episodio 'Bang! You’re dead' de Alfred Hitchcock fue el que generó mayor sincronización cerebral entre los espectadores, con un 70% de coincidencia en la actividad cortical.
¿Qué técnicas cinematográficas facilitan la sincronización de la actividad cerebral en los espectadores?
-Técnicas como el montaje narrativo, cortes en la acción y el uso de planos de ojo (matching eye-level) guían la atención de los espectadores hacia elementos clave de la narrativa, lo que facilita la sincronización de la actividad cerebral entre diferentes personas.
¿Qué diferencia observaron los investigadores entre ver películas solo y verlas en grupo?
-Un estudio en Berlín mostró que las respuestas emocionales de los espectadores pueden variar al ver películas en grupo. Aquellos con más empatía y capacidad de Teoría de la Mente son más propensos a que sus reacciones emocionales cambien cuando ven películas en compañía.
¿Cómo el montaje paralelo en cine genera tensión en el espectador?
-El montaje paralelo une dos acciones simultáneas pero distantes en espacio, lo que crea expectativa y tensión en el cerebro del espectador. Un ejemplo clásico es cuando una heroína está atada a las vías del tren mientras un héroe cabalga para salvarla.
¿Qué es el 'montaje tonal' según Sergei Eisenstein y cómo afecta a los espectadores?
-El montaje tonal es una técnica descrita por Eisenstein que conecta dos imágenes con contenido emocional para reforzar un mensaje. Esta técnica apela a la capacidad evocativa de las imágenes y activa el sistema límbico del cerebro, intensificando la respuesta emocional del espectador.
¿Por qué el cine afecta nuestras emociones más intensamente que situaciones de la vida real?
-El cine puede evocar emociones más intensas que situaciones reales porque manipula deliberadamente nuestras percepciones, emociones y expectativas a través de técnicas narrativas y visuales, activando nuestros sistemas de recompensa y empatía en formas únicas.
¿Qué función terapéutica podría tener el cine según Rafael Salín Pascual?
-Rafael Salín Pascual sugiere que el cine puede tener una función terapéutica, actuando como una forma de auto-terapia donde los espectadores procesan emociones difíciles o disfrutan de alivio emocional, como en el caso de películas de terror o comedia.
Outlines
🎥 El nacimiento de la magia del cine
Hace casi 130 años, los hermanos Lumière presentaron su proyector en un café parisino, cambiando para siempre las posibilidades expresivas de la humanidad. Georges Méliès, un mago presente en esa exhibición, fue uno de los primeros en ver el potencial mágico del cine. El episodio habla sobre cómo el cine, con sus imágenes en movimiento y efectos especiales, cautiva nuestros sentidos y cómo el cerebro responde a estas narrativas visuales a través de la neurocinemática. Las películas, como 'El bueno, el malo y el feo', pueden sincronizar la actividad cerebral de los espectadores, lo que demuestra el control de los directores sobre nuestra percepción y atención.
🧠 El poder de la narrativa en la sincronización cerebral
Los investigadores proyectaron escenas fuera de orden y al revés para medir la actividad cerebral, lo que mostró que, aunque los movimientos oculares coincidían, la sincronización cerebral disminuía. Esto demuestra que el cine no solo afecta el cerebro por las imágenes, sino por su construcción estética, técnica y narrativa. La capacidad de los cineastas para controlar la atención y emociones de los espectadores se explora a través de ejemplos de montaje y efectos especiales, como los utilizados por Alfred Hitchcock, que maximiza la sincronización cerebral de los espectadores.
🎞️ El impacto emocional del cine en lo colectivo y lo individual
Un estudio en un cine de Berlín reveló que la experiencia emocional al ver una película varía según si estamos solos o acompañados. Las personas más empáticas muestran una mayor respuesta emocional y sincronización con los personajes cuando ven películas en grupo. Esta diferencia entre ver una película solo en casa o en una sala de cine destaca el papel del entorno social en la experiencia cinematográfica. Además, se discuten las técnicas narrativas que rompen con la linealidad y crean una sensación de continuidad y tensión en el cerebro, como el montaje paralelo y la edición narrativa.
🎬 Técnicas de montaje y la manipulación del cerebro
El montaje cinematográfico no solo dirige nuestra atención, sino que también crea nuevas formas de experimentar situaciones en la pantalla. Técnicas como el montaje paralelo y el montaje tonal, exploradas por cineastas como Sergei Eisenstein, permiten manipular los sistemas temporales y emocionales del cerebro, generando fuertes reacciones. El montaje juega con las expectativas y recompensa del cerebro, generando la sensación de continuidad a pesar de las interrupciones visuales. Así como el cerebro construye la continuidad visual, el cine utiliza este principio para crear una narrativa coherente a partir de fragmentos visuales.
🎭 Cine, neurociencia y la percepción de la realidad
El cine y la neurociencia se intersectan de manera fascinante, como se ve en películas que exploran la mente y sus trastornos, como 'Being John Malkovich' o 'Inception'. Estos filmes exploran ideas de neuronas espejo, dualismo y alteración del tiempo. El cine no solo entretiene, sino que también sirve como una herramienta para estudiar la mente humana. Además, se argumenta que el cine actúa como una forma de auto-terapia, permitiendo que las personas procesen emociones intensas. La capacidad del cine para estimular nuestros sistemas perceptivos y emocionales lo convierte en una poderosa herramienta para entender nuestra psicología.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Neurocinemática
💡Lumière Brothers
💡Georges Méliès
💡Redes neuronales
💡Uri Hasson
💡Corte narrativo
💡Sistema límbico
💡Montaje paralelo
💡Empatía
💡Jean-Luc Godard
Highlights
Los hermanos Lumière presentaron por primera vez imágenes en movimiento en un café parisino en 1895, un evento que cambió para siempre las posibilidades de expresión humana.
El director Georges Méliès, presente esa noche, fue uno de los pocos en reconocer el potencial mágico del cine como medio artístico.
La neurociencia cognitiva y el cine se fusionan en una nueva rama llamada Neurocinemática, que estudia lo que sucede en el cerebro cuando vemos una película.
Un estudio pionero en 2004 mostró cómo los cerebros de los espectadores sincronizaban sus activaciones durante la visualización de 'El bueno, el malo y el feo'.
El trabajo de Alfred Hitchcock mostró la mayor sincronización cerebral entre los espectadores, con un 70% de coincidencia en patrones de actividad cortical.
Las películas bien construidas controlan la atención y emociones de los espectadores, demostrando el poder de la narrativa cinematográfica.
Los estudios sugieren que la capacidad de empatía de los espectadores afecta su respuesta emocional cuando ven películas en grupo.
Las técnicas cinematográficas, como el montaje paralelo, generan emociones intensas al superponer acciones simultáneas que crean expectativa.
El montaje tonal, descrito por Sergei Eisenstein, vincula imágenes con contenido emocional para reforzar un mensaje en la mente del espectador.
El montaje métrico y el montaje rítmico manipulan la percepción del tiempo y el movimiento, afectando cómo procesamos la historia en pantalla.
El cine utiliza mecanismos como la 'persistencia de la impresión' en la retina para crear la ilusión de movimiento continuo a 24 fotogramas por segundo.
Películas como 'Inception' exploran temas neurocientíficos, como la alteración temporal en sueños, mostrando cómo el cine puede abordar la mente humana.
El cine tiene una función terapéutica, ayudando a las personas a procesar emociones como el miedo o la risa, actuando como una forma de auto-terapia.
El cine es un instrumento innovador para estudiar el cerebro y la mente, manipulando nuestra atención, percepción y redes de procesamiento emocional.
Jean-Luc Godard afirmó que cada montaje cinematográfico es una mentira, y el cine nos convierte en fanáticos de esas mentiras, guiados por los directores.
Transcripts
Almost 130 years ago, in a cafe in Paris,
the eccentric Lumière brothers presented a strange invention to the public.
A light projection on a canvas made it possible to show
ten series of moving images, between them:
The sprinkler sprinkled,
The arrival of a train at La Ciotat station
and Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon.
The room was almost empty, but among the few spectators
was the director of the Robert-Houdin theater: Georges Méliès.
This magician may have been the only one,
that evening, to realize that
what we could do with that box that made a terrible noise
and that shabby canvas,
was precisely that: MAGIC.
What happened in this Parisian cafe in 1895
forever changed the possibilities of expression of humanity.
The spectators, that evening,
were the first to experience the pleasure of cinema,
where moving images,
new narrative forms and cinematographic special effects
unite to deceive our senses.
Why do films fascinate us so much?
How can stories projected on a screen
absorb us to the point of making us forget the outside world?
How does a good director handle our attention
and orchestrate the activity of our brains?
A new branch of cognitive neuroscience,
"Neurocinematics"
uses neuroimaging techniques to elucidate
what happens in our brain when we watch a movie,
facilitating the fusion of cognitive neuroscience
and film studies.
Both art and the brain work on the basis of connections:
A synapse is the space of connection between two neurons
and the magic of cinema takes place in the connection space
between director, actors, big screen and spectators.
I am Fernanda Pérez Gay, I have a PhD in Neuroscience,
and in this episode we will explore the connections between our brains and cinema
one of the most innovative artistic forms.
What systems in our brain are active when we go to the movies?
If you think about everything that happens in a movie,
we can assume that cinema
induces the activation of several brain networks,
including visual and auditory networks,
language networks,
the action observation network - which includes mirror neurons,
the emotional circuits of the limbic system
and those circuits involved in social cognition.
These hypotheses were observed for the first time
in a study carried out in 2004,
in which a team of neuroscientists, coordinated by Uri Hasson,
asked different subjects placed to watch 30 minutes of
Sergio Leone's film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly inside a brain scanner.
The researchers measured the subjects' brain activity,
and their eye movements.
Beyond identifying the brain regions that were most active during this task,
they showed that both brain activation and eye movements
coincided across the course of the film.
Different subjects observing the same scene
directed their gaze to the same areas of the screen
and showed very similar brain activation.
This data confirmed what movie goers already knew:
that the best films generate considerable control
over spectators' mental activity and behavior.
This pioneering study of neurocinematics
paved the way for the study of cinema from the point of view of neuroscience.
In a subsequent study, the researchers repeated the same measurements
comparing The good, the bad and the ugly
with other three options:
A fragment of the episode “Bang! You're dead”, from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series;
a fragment of a comedy series by Larry David
and, finally, an amateur video made in a park in one take.
They concluded that the episode directed by Hitchcock
was the one that most synchronized the spectators' brain activity,
which cerebral cortex's activation patterns coincided in a proportion of 70%.
Right after Hitchcock, The good, the bad and the ugly
reached 50% synchronization of the spectators' cerebral cortex,
while Larry David's series only generated 20%,
and the amateur video of the park, not even 5%.
In other words, if we show a video that we have just filmed in a park
each subject probably fixes their attention on a different element.
Filmmakers, on the other hand, are able to grab audiences' attention
through the conscious construction of actions, reflections and events
that guide our perception and our emotions.
In this sense, it is interesting to note that it is the work of Alfred Hitchcock
which generated the most control over the subjects' brain activity.
Hitchcock made history as a film prodigy
who “wrote for the eyes”, in the words of Jean Cocteau.
His films manage to intentionally modulate stimuli
to make spectators pay attention to them.
This phenomenon, corroborated by the study results,
was already known by those who appreciate the work of this great filmmaker!
Beyond this first approach, the researchers
also screened the same videos starting with their end,
and cutting and pasting the sequences out of order.
Although eye movements still coincided after these changes,
they observed a decrease in the synchronization of brain activity.
These findings confirm that the ability of cinema to orchestrate brain activity
doesn't just come from showing the same images at the same time,
but by playing with their aesthetic, technical and narrative characteristics.
Stay with us on SINAPSIS to explore some special effects
which allow directors
to conduct the "hidden orchestra" of our brains.
"NEURO-WONDERS"
French filmmaker and poet Jean Cocteau
affirmed that he could imagine the joy Shakespeare or Mozart
if they had known cinema,
“This machine for embodying dreams.”
In fact, the capacity of films to evoke emotions is such that,
sometimes a situation on the screen
can affect us more than the same event in real life.
But how are these emotional reactions
influenced by the social experience of cinema
- the fact of voluntarily locking oneself in a room full of strangers?
This question inspired a study that took place in a Berlin cinema.
A group of subjects watched films that caused diverse emotions.
(laughter, anger, tenderness or fear)
under two conditions: solo, or in a group of people.
During these sessions, their bodily emotional responses were measured:
changes in heart rate, breathing or sweating.
This study showed that viewers could be divided in two groups:
Those whose responses changed when they watched a movie with other people
and those who showed a similar response regardless if alone or with others
In addition, the researchers asked participants
how much did characters' emotions resonated with them,
and then measured their Theory of Mind capacities,
- the ability to interpret the beliefs, desires and emotions of others.
They found that subjects whose emotional reactions
changed when they were accompanied
were the most gifted in these mindreading tasks
and showed more empathy towards the characters in the film.
This suggests a link between our capacity for empathy
and our emotional response to the collective experience of cinema.
Back to real life: Your emotional response to watching a movie on Netflix
alone eating ice cream on your sofa,
may differ from your reaction to the same movie
when you are sitting in a movie theater.
If you are a very empathetic person,
having other people in the room will speed up your heart rate
and make you sweat, but it may also change
your way of understanding the characters on the screen.
From the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet cave,
and until the invention of the Lumière brothers,
reproducing moving images is one of the oldest human obsessions.
After the first films of the Lumières brothers, other directors
have broken with the linear patterns of the first cinematographic experiences.
The majority of the films we love
are not ordinary reproductions of real life scenes;
they actually use a whole series of cuts and camera movements
bringing together or moving away from objects or people,
unlike simple videos.
This assembly, which we refer to as narrative montage,
is what produces the syntax of the cinematographic image.
Some classic examples of this type of storytelling
were developed by filmmaker David Wark Griffith.
Inspired by literature, he set up codes and techniques
which, while breaking the linearity of primitive cinema,
produce in our brains an illusion of continuity.
For example, cutting on action
is a mechanism that uses the passage of a shot
where the subject is framed in its entirety
to a close-up on the action he performs.
For example, we show his hand on a handle,
implying that he opens a door.
A similar mechanism is the Matching eye-level (or eye level shot)
which makes the transition between a shot of a character looking out of view
to a shot of what he's looking at.
This makes it possible to go from someone watching to what is being watched,
producing an effect of continuity in space.
These mechanisms oblige the viewer
to pay attention to the character's behavior
and ignore the details or context observed in the previous shot.
This explains why the brain and eye activity of different subjects
is similar when faced with the same scene.
In the cinema, the montage tells us where to look
and what elements to consider for our analysis of history.
Thus, it transmits to us information which, in other circumstances,
we would have to effortfully deduce
- for example, what a character looks at -
which facilitates our understanding and interpretation of the action.
But cinema doesn't just direct our attention;
it also creates new ways of experiencing a situation.
- only possible on the big screen -.
Parallel editing, for example,
merges several simultaneous actions, which causes tension and expectation.
Think of the classic streak where the young heroine is tied
to the tracks of a railroad as a train approaches at full speed,
while a dashing cowboy gallops to his aid.
This technique superimposes two events which,
although they happen at the same time, are distant in space,
and it creates expectation in our brain.
The anticipation of the outcome then generates very strong emotional reactions
thanks to our brain'sreward system,
in which the expectation of reward - or punishment -
plays a central role.
When, finally, the two scenes come together in the same shot,
the spectator recovers the spatio-temporal continuity,
which allows him to process history in a natural way.
This idea of juxtaposition of two notions or stories
was widely explored by filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein,
for whom the real strength of montage
was to arise from the collision of two independent pieces.
Among the editing techniques he described,
was tonal montage, which
ties two images with emotional content, in order to reinforce a message.
This type of assembly calls on the metaphor, the evocative
capacities of an image and its connection to the limbic system of the brain.
Einsenstein also described the metric montage,
in which the filmmaker cuts the action at specific times
to create an illusion of temporal continuity,
and rhythmic montage, where the action is cut in the middle
to give an impression of frantic movement.
These inventions, intended to manipulate our brain systems of temporality,
demonstrate that, as Semir Zeki said,
“In every artist there is a neurologist. "
When a film is well made, our brain perceives it as a continuum,
without perceiving its cutting as something unnatural.
In fact, our perception of reality ressembles
a film montage, for it is made of intermissions:
what we perceive every day as a continuous flow of images
is actually a series of snapshots of the world,
interspersed with the void when we close our eyelids or move our eyes.
It is thanks to “top down” brain processes
that we fill the void and generate this illusion of continuity,
using our prior visual experience.
J. Anderson, the author of one of the first books
bringing together cognitive theories and studies on cinema,
argues that “the power of cinema lies in the rules that directors
have established and described since its invention.
These rules make it possible to conceal its true nature thanks to a
narrative construction that coincides with the criteria of our systems of perception;
creating a feeling of unity and truthfulness. ”
"HUNTING FOR ANSWERS"
Throughout history,
cinema has also addressed neurosciences in its content,
exploring with its storytelling and image techniques
various phenomena of our mental life.
Rafael Salín Pascual will talk to us about these relationships between cinema and neuroscience
He is one of the Mexican psychiatrists and researchers
who has been interested in this relationship for several years.
It is striking to note that cinema,
which is relatively new, a little over 100 years old
has grown so much. And I think one of the reasons
- it's not just technology, although technique is important -
is the demand of viewers.
We wonder why?
And in a way cinema is like
a metaphor for how the brain works.
We can appreciate cinema thanks to the fact that the retina
has what is called "persistenc of impression",
which allos us to perceive an image at 24 frames per second,
by giving us the illusion that it is moving.
It's the same thing the brain does every day,
just not in this time frame.
In other words, we don't capture reality
"Online" as we think,
but although we capture reality at high speed,
it is not continuous.
So this causes us to have many phenomena in which the brain predicts what's coming
so that we can speed up some processes.
This is the reason why cinema has had such an impact.
In addition, cinema has taken on subjects that have to do with neuroscience.
Why? Just as there are now, for example, neurophilosophists,
there are also now neurocinematics,
including directors like Kauffman
who are very interested in bringing things like "mirror neurons"
or the "Fregoli syndrome" to their films.
One of them is, for example, "Being John Malkovich",
a film where they find a passage through which
-it's obviously science fiction- we can get into the brain of actor John Malkovich,
in a totally dualistic vision,
because I'm in John Malkovich's brain but I'm still me,
and John Malkovich doesn't even know it.
Of course, directors are not documentary writers,
they can do such arbitrary things like Inception,
where it is shown how one dream contains another dream
and this leads to a kind of temporal alteration,
and these explorations are another great utility of cinema.
Finally there is also the therapeutic function of cinema,
regarding empathy, and one might wonder,
why do people watch horror movies, why do people watch comedy type movies?
My interpretation is that sometimes it's like a kind of self-therapy
that people prefer without knowing it.
Cinema is interesting for neurosciences
not just because we are interested in brain activity
when we watch our favorite movie,
but it also because it represents an innovative instrument
to study the brain and the mind.
By stimulating our visual and auditory systems,
manipulating our attention and perception,
and activating our networks of social cognition and emotional processing,
the techniques developed since this invention by the Lumière brothers,
are powerful tools for studying and understanding
various aspects of our psychology.
For the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard,
every montage is a lie.
We who love to watch movies are thus fanatics
of lies; we place ourselves in the hands of the directors
so that they delude our eyes and our ears
and lead, for a few hours,
the hidden orchestra of our nervous system.
The Brain - wrote Emily Dickinson - is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do— As Syllable from Sound—.
Dear friends, this is the last episode of this art and brain series.
Thank you very much for accompanying us on this journey through
brain connections and artistic practices.
Don't forget to like this video, follow us on our social networks
and subscribe to our Youtube channel,
because we will continue to share content and answer your questions
to explore with you the connections between art ...
and your brains.
English translation: Fernanda Pérez-Gay Juárez, financed by Fonds de Recherche du Quebec.
In memoriam, Grace Quintanilla, dear friend and supporter of this project.
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