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Though science fiction tales like Clockwork Orange and Videodrome have toyed with the notion that images from television and movies could rewire people's brains, the idea has always been controversial and unsubstantiated. But now researchers have shown empirically that anything you look at, including movies, changes the the connections between neurons in your brain. In other words, what you see changes your brain at a neurological level. The good news is the parts of your brain devoted to vision can be rewired, which has positive implications for people blinded after strokes. The bad news is that what you see today could have a lasting effect on what you see tomorrow. A particularly powerful negative image might alter your perception of positive images later.
According to a release:
In the study, [Valentin] Dragoi and co-author Diego Gutnisky, a graduate research assistant at The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston, measured the effects of visual stimulation on the responses of multiple neurons whose electrical activity was measured simultaneously in animals. They carefully examined the responses of a population of cells in visual cortex to dynamic stimuli, which consisted of movie sequences displayed on a video monitor.What's truly interesting about this study is that images from film seem to remold our brains as much as real-world ones. So if people watch a lot of violent movies, it's actually possible that the neural links formed as a result will influence what they see in reality. Note that this doesn't mean it would make people more violent — it might just make them perceive violence more readily, or might cause them to interpret things as being more violent than they are. Image via LinMercer."We provide empirical evidence that brief exposure, or adaptation, to a fixed stimulus causes pronounced changes in the degree of cooperation between individual neurons and an improvement in the efficiency with which the population of cells encodes information," Dragoi and Gutnisky report. "These results are consistent with the 'efficient coding hypothesis' - that is, sensory neurons are adapted to the statistical properties of the stimuli that they are exposed to and with changes in human discrimination performance after adaptation." . . .
While their study focused on how neuronal populations adapt to visual stimulation, the same could hold true for other senses - hearing, smell, taste and touch, Dragoi said. "We're trying to understand how a network of sensory neurons changes its encoding properties to properly represent the environment," he said. "Our results may have general implications for sensory and motor coding in a variety of brain areas."
First Empirical Study Demonstrating that Populations of Nerve Cells Adapt to Changing Images [Eurekalert]
Comments
Just like Snow Crash!
Damnit, I was going to say that!
To be fair, A Clockwork Orange wasn't premised on images altering anyone's personality. It was a Pavlovian process where Alex was forced to watch violent movies while being given drugs that made him ill. After a while, his body started reacting badly to the site of the violence even without the drugs.
The headline is a little misleading because it makes it seem like another one of those "science conclusively demonstrates the staggeringly obvious" bits of research. Which I don't think it is.
Of course visual stimuli rewires the brain. When a person concentrates to memorize a visual scene for later recall, they are rewiring their brain in a subtle and perhaps global way. Every vivid visual memory you have is the result of this rewiring process.
What these scientists have actually done is learn something very new about how the brain rewires itself from visual stimulus--something unexpected and provocative.
@SeanOHara: Yes, but he was being programmed by the images as much as by the drug. He learned to hate experiencing violence in the real world via drug-induced aversion to violent images. After all, they programmed him with movies rather than violent action.
Tennis anyone?
There was a documentary on this effect about 20 years ago. It was called "Videodrome".
Sooooo, is this the process describing how I REMEMBER watching clockwork orange?
If i remember correctly it made Alex react to Beethoven as well.
So the next time I'm goatse'd I can sue for assault with intent to cause damage to my neurons?
Hello Annalee,
In response to your opening post regarding violence and brain rewiring, a study has actually confirmed this.
Repeated Exposure to Media Violence Is Associated with Diminished Response in an Inhibitory Frontolimbic Network
[www.plosone.org]
Basically what happens is that the mechanism that inhibits a violent reaction is impaired after watching violent images/movies or even violent video games. So one would be less likely to control one's self and more likely to snap at something that would otherwise be trivial.
Note that this is not the same process as desensitisation.
@Kevin Kelly: Oh, man, you beat me to it. Just like snow crash. The think is, I think I like the idea so much that I believe it might be true.
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