io9
Those Godzilla movies and Mork and Mindy reruns you grew up watching have altered the way you think on a biological level. At least, that's the implication of a controversial new study MIT researchers announced today, which showed that culture changes the way your brain is wired, and how you think about visual problems. In the study, a group of people born in the US were asked to do a visual puzzle in an MRI brain scanner — the results were compared with a group of recent immigrants from East Asia doing the same task. The two groups used very different parts of their brains to do the same thing.
Eurekalert reports:
Subjects were shown a sequence of stimuli consisting of lines within squares and were asked to compare each stimulus with the previous one. In some trials, they judged whether the lines were the same length regardless of the surrounding squares (an absolute judgment of individual objects independent of context). In other trials, they decided whether the lines were in the same proportion to the squares, regardless of absolute size (a relative judgment of interdependent objects) . . . Two groups showed different patterns of brain activation when performing these tasks. Americans, when making relative judgments that are typically harder for them, activated brain regions involved in attention-demanding mental tasks. They showed much less activation of these regions when making the more culturally familiar absolute judgments. East Asians showed the opposite tendency, engaging the brain's attention system more for absolute judgments than for relative judgments.No word on how growing up absorbing all those fights between Ghidorah and Godzilla affected my judgment. [Eurekalert]
Comments
I am not sure what the ramifications of this are. But, I suspect it's too late for me to do anything about it now. Fingers crossed that American culture hasn't made me a moron.
I think it also might have something to do with how different their language is.
Cool, but Marshall McLuhan could've told us this 40 years ago. And kind of did.
Now I'm glad I watched Fantasia and 2001: A Space Odyssey so many times when I was a kid.
OK. It appears that,according to the snippet of the study, that americans are more comfortable making judgements of objects and east asians were better at judging relationships? Is that what it says? I don't see anywhere where it says Bad Cinema is the culprit.
@moff: Yeah but he didn't have a cool MRI machine so it must not have been true.
Soooo....What are the implications if I grew up watching Love American Style?
This is why I watch Anime.
@annalee: Of course, he would probably say our need to see the MRI results before giving an idea like this any credence is a result of our visually biased Western culture. ;-)
And is the MRI machine actually cool, or hot? (Bada-bum!)
Have they done studies on the effects of Madonna and American Idol?
When is someone going to invent the "Mr. MRI". I want to study my brain at home.
@hn333: Your brain is guaranteed to be enlightned, then. Well done!
I disagree to the efficacy of anime vis a vis enlightenment. My experience of Anime is that it is either culturally impenetrable or simply vapid. Which, after living in Japan is my assessment of Japan in general. However, they are ususally harmless, unlike my fellow Americans who are mildly psychotic. So it's a trade-off.
@FrankenPC: Basically, you are doomed.
@braak: I think you are safe, but I bet your kids are screwed.
So, Professor Forrester & TV's Frank finally published their findings, eh?
@Cacafuego: hahahaha
Io9 isn't winning me over showing me something from Godzilla vs. Destroyah.
No word on how growing up absorbing all those fights between Ghidorah and Godzilla affected my judgment.
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Three brainstems, of course.
@annalee:
DOH! Between LAS and all the UV radiation I got as a kid, I'm suprised I haven't simply disintegrated.
I heard about this in a psychology class. Well, something close to it, I think. There was a picture that didn't 'make sense', like a simple optical illusion. We were asked to draw the picture from memory and no one could do it, but apparently people from some other country could.
@garro: It's been suggested that the way culture shapes the mind is why Eastern Europe and Russia became such a hotbed of physicists in the 20th century: The average Western brain was conditioned to see things linearly and in terms of efficient cause (that's perhaps not as true as it used to be), which drives Newtonian physics; the Easterners were better at seeing simultaneous configuration, which is essential for Einsteinian physics.
Well, I'm betting growing up on a steady diet of anime, Japanese shaming-gameshows, Godzilla movies & Inframan tv series probably isn't much better for the brain than Mickey Mouse, American Idol, rap music & reality shows.
I read the article that this piece links to. It says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about any kind of link between movies and these results. THAT is just a bit of snarkiness on the part of the poster.
@moff: ...the Easterners were better at seeing simultaneous configuration, which is essential for Einsteinian physics
I grew up on the east side of Cleveland which can be found if you draw a horizontal line about 500 miles directly west fro New York, and I was born in South Euclid. What am I?
Plumficient!
i don't care what anyone else thinks...
but Godzilla IS good for your brain.... lol
This is your brain on Godzilla. Any questions?
@Eac_O_System: Hey Godzilla vs. Destroyah had all the cool mini-destroyas in it that looked like the alien! Oh wait no that wasn't very cool. Would you have preferred . . . Biollante??!
@Annalee: I don't care if Destroyah is the coolest monster in the world ... they shouldn't have killed Godzilla ever... As for Biollante, I thought that was cheating alot like the Clover Monster was cheating since Biollante just looked like a giant alligator, HOWEVER, at least it was transparent, whereas the Cloverfield Monster IS just a Beleen Whale planted onto a spider's body.
@annalee: Annalee are you hiring? My CV will leave you breathless ;)
Hrmm... i think it's really hard to separate movie differences from greater cultural differences. The way social situations are processed in China is different from Boston to China to Spain to Alaska. It's compounded by language, which shows some other cultural preferences. Movies may be a big indicator of what some of those differences are, and a person with a well rounded range of exposure might be better prepared for the world on some level? Personally I have to rack up the efforts of Creature Double Feature, Lovebug, Christine, and Carpenter's The Thing to figure out where I'm coming from.
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