Coherent neural responses of human populations during watching movie

Abstract

Humans experience dynamical variations of cognitive and emotional states while watching a movie. Recently, neurocinematics has emerged as an interdisciplinary research field to understand how human brain reacts to films. So far, many studies attempted to find coherent responses among the subjects that are induced by a film. However, due to the sociocultural nature of cinema, a neurocinematic study may need to examine brain responses of a human population while they are watching a movie in the same space. In this study, we measured subjects' brain activity while they were watching a movie together at the same time. We investigated inter-subject correlations (ISCs) for each of five frequency bands: Delta (2∼4Hz), Theta (4∼8Hz), Alpha (8∼13Hz), low Beta (13∼18), and high Beta (18∼23Hz). A non-parametric permutation method was used to test statistical significance. The results showed that the ISCs over all the frequency bands increased in several scenes, which were important for the stream in the plot of the movie. Our study demonstrated a plausibility of extracting coherent neural responses to films in a coextensive group of people.