Georgia Tech Study: As Movie Suspense Builds, Brains Zoom In

“In many ways, we process films similar to how we process other things in our environment,” said Bezdek, who wanted to see what the subjects’ brains would do as suspense built.

A flashing checkerboard pattern played on the edge of the movie screen in the study participants’ peripheral vision as they watched scenes from movies like “North by Northwest,” “Alien” and “License to Kill.”  

Bezdek found as the suspense built, the part of the visual cortex that was focused on the movie became more active. The part of the visual cortex that handles peripheral vision, which would have been processing those flashing checkerboards, got less active.

“The world disappears when suspense increases,” Bezdek said.

It wasn’t only the visual parts of people’s brains that zoomed in on the action. Attention also seemed to change.

“Regions of your brain that process attention increase with suspense,” said Eric Schumacher, an associate professor of psychology at Georgia Tech who contributed to the study. “And regions of your brain that process internally focused memory retrieval or mind wandering decrease with suspense.”

Bezdek is also studying how those suspenseful moments affect memory.

Daniel Drane, a neuroscientist at Emory who wasn’t involved in the study, said the study could be helpful for surgical applications, too. He uses neuroimaging to plan for epilepsy and tumor surgery.

“I thought it was a good use of showing how neuroimaging technology could be combined with a theory of brain function,” he said. “The more we know about these circuits, the better job we can do to protect them when someone’s having surgery.”

Bezdek’s paper was published in the journal, Neuroscience.