Anatomy & Physiology of Storytelling

Radik Kagirov

‘Physiology’, ‘Anatomy’, ‘Animal’…Are these terms just metaphors?

Some films can impose a tight grip on viewers’ minds

(For me) “creation is based on an exact science of audience reactions”.

Hitchcock

• Neurocinema is a new filmmaking process that studies a viewer's sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to film stimuli.

• Researchers use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure changes in activity in parts of the brain, electroencephalography (EEG) to measure activity in specific regional spectra of the brain response, and sensors to measure changes in body physiological state (heart rate, respiratory rate, galvanic skin response) to learn exactly what scenes excite or disinterest the viewer.

Mainstream films encourage a regression to primitive stages of human development

• Evolutionary psychology claims that humans are fundamentally motivated by the need to reproduce their genes.

• Most human behavior is adaptively motivated, a means of equipping "the organism" for survival and reproduction.

• Film viewing would have to be motivated by the adaptive benefits it offers.

Monkeys that see sexually active females register as much as a 400 percent jump in testosterone

"A functional-MRI study of brain activity would show that more neurons are actively engaged in processing a 3D movie than the same film seen in 2D"

James Cameron, Variety magazine

• Our psychological/emotional state affects the endocrine system. For example, the emotion of fear is related to adrenaline.

• Wherever a thought goes there is a body chemical reaction

• The hypothalamus, the emotional center of the brain, transforms emotions into physical response. It also controls the body’s appetite, blood sugar levels, body temperature, adrenal and pituitary glands, heart, lung, digestive and circulatory systems.

• Neuropeptides, the chemical messenger hormones, carry emotions back and forth between the mind and body. They link perception in the brain to the body via organs, hormones and cellular activity.

• Neuropeptides influence every major section of the immune system, so the body and mind do work together as one unit.

Correlation between increased urinary excretion of epinephrine and strong emotional arousal, independent of the type of emotion being elicited.

Music and

physiology

“Signaling for fitness”

Organisms signal their condition to other individuals

Drama & Nature -infinite conflicts

Skin & Blood

Laughter lowers the blood pressure and increases oxygenation of the blood; influences various immune system components

;-)

Brain sees faces everywhere

Brain sees this everywhere

An unconscious element of touch is unavoidably concealed in vision

Brain likes babies

RadikKagirov

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