Motion cues modulate responses to emotion in movies

Abstract

Film theorists and practitioners suggest that motion can be manipulated in movie scenes to elicit emotional responses in viewers. However, our understanding of the role of motion in emotion perception remains limited. On the one hand, movies continuously depict local motion- movements of objects and humans, which are crucial for generating emotional responses. Movie scenes also frequently portray global motion, mainly induced by large camera movements, global motion being yet another source of information used by the brain during natural vision. Here we used functional MRI to elucidate the contributions of local and global motion to emotion perception during movie viewing. Subjects observed long (1 min) movie segments depicting emotional or neutral content. Brain activity in areas that showed preferential responses to emotional content was strongly linked over time with frame-wide variations in global motion, and to a lesser extent with local motion information. Similarly, stronger responses to emotional content were recorded within regions of interest whose activity was attuned to global and local motion over time. Since global motion fields are experienced during self-motion, we suggest that camera movements may induce illusory self-motion cues in viewers that interact with the movie’s narrative and with other emotional cues in generating affective responses.

Movies and narratives as naturalistic stimuli in neuroimaging

“…First-person perspective seems especially efficient in driving embodied and emotional perception ( Eich et al, 2009 ; Said Yekta et al, 2009 ). In this research area, methodology advances have been vital ( Dayan et al, 2018 ; Gaz et al, 2012 ; Jaaskelainen et al, 2008 , 2016b ; Nummenmaa et al, 2012 , 2014a ; Viinikainen et al, 2012 ; Wallentin et al, 2011 ). One good example is producing successful classification of emotional states on the basis of brain-activity patterns by developing machine-learning algorithms.…”

On the physical variables filmmakers use to engage viewers.

“…In film theory, this technique is thought to shrink the distance between a movie and its audience by conveying the impression of presence in cinematic action (see Pandža, 2018). Indeed, Heimann et al (2019) found that, in comparison to a still or zooming camera, a moving camera modulates neural activity in sensorimotor areas of the brain, which in turn appears to foster stronger responses to emotional content (Dayan et al, 2018).…”

Probing Neurodynamics of Experienced Emotions - A Hitchhiker's Guide to Film fMRI

“…The discrete theories of emotions define affective phenomena as a set of genetically programmed and categorically distinct systems featured by prototypical facial (Ekman and Friesen, 1975) and bodily (Witkower and Tracy, 2019) expressions. Advanced analytical strategies on brain BOLD data have revealed the neural underpinnings of a number of discrete emotions evoked by film clips (Dayan et al, 2018;Hamann, 2012;Jacob et al, 2018;Nummenmaa et al, 2014;Peelen et al, 2010;Ventura et al, 2020), such as fear, disgust, joy, and so on. These studies also promoted a shift in our understanding of these emotion-specific brain signatures towards multivariate patterns (Kragel and LaBar, 2016a;Nummenmaa and Saarimäki, 2019), and complex network topologies with overlapping spatial configurations (Alia-Klein et al, 2020;Nummenmaa et al, 2012).…”