Hollywood should give pride of place to brain science

Hollywood should give pride of place to brain science

By Deena Weisberg & Marc Coutanche

OppenheimerThe success of at the box office – and at the Oscars – shows that scientific achievements can shine in cinema. This is a good thing for science, where physics and biology play a leading role in successes ranging from Interstellar At jurassic park franchise. But a key area of ​​science often remains poorly described: neuroscience and psychology.

Consider that we are now over a decade into the “the brain era“, following President Barack Obama's $5 billion announcement BRAIN Initiative. A year after its announcement, instead of a jurassic park Or Interstellar, We have Lucy, a film centered on one of the most persistent and frustrating brain myths– that we only use a small fraction of our brain.

The small screen is not spared either. Let's take an example that is close to our hearts: a 2023 episode of Paramount's Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (“Among the lotus eaters”). After reaching a planet where certain mysterious elements seem to systematically erase people's memories, we find characters who remember nothing of their relationships or their personal history. They don't even remember their own names. Despite this, everyone is remarkably calm. They quietly help each other establish routines and relationships that are renewed each morning. But in reality, people who have lost touch with their own identity (for example, due to age-related illnesses or stroke) find this loss very distressing. Our sense of identity cannot be removed without cost.

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So why are people impatient? Oppenheimeris of great scientific precision but barely shrugs its shoulders when Dumbledore Thoughtful (memory bowl) in the Harry Potter The series wrongly assumes that human memory is as precise as a video recording? This discrepancy can be explained in part by the way we view physics, as opposed to psychology. It's easy to see the need to consult experts on seemingly complex topics like nuclear physics and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). But people think that the behavioral sciences are inherently less complicated than the physical sciences, even if this is not actually the case. We tend to assume that we are already experts on how our minds work, relying on our unscientific intuitions – a kind of Dunning-Kruger effect for the mind, in which we overestimate our expertise.

Also, myths about the brain and behavior are sticky. Many people always believe that we only use 10% of our brain (false), that we learn either through the left brain or the right brain (also false), or that you can learn to function on less sleep (a sleepy “no”). Unfortunately, we tend to confuse familiarity with accuracy. the more you hear a claim, the more likely you are to believe it, even if it is false.

You could say that these are just movies: they are fictional and not meant to be taken seriously! Can't we tolerate a little unrealism in our entertainment?

Fair enough. We're certainly not claiming that every moment of every movie or TV show must reflect perfectly accurate and current science. But we argue that it matters that movies and TV shows get it wrong, not only because filmmakers miss opportunities to educate audiences about this branch of science, but also because these depictions powerfully shape perception of the public on the functioning of the mind.

This may be especially true for stories featuring neuroatypical people. The film Rain manwhich in 1988 presented Dustin Hoffman as a man with autism spectrum disorder, is now part of the public consciousness around autism, even if savant-level skills are relatively rare. The expectation that each person on the spectrum will have a “cognitive super power” has mental health costs. More recently, the folk horror film Solicitude describes bipolar disorder as leading to homicide and suicide, but sufferers bipolar disorder is not more likely to commit violent crimes than anyone else. To take another example, The shiny implies that having an imaginary companion is psychologically unhealthy. This depiction has led many people to falsely believe that natural exercise of childhood imagination is truly harmful. Filmmakers have a responsibility to accurately depict certain aspects of psychology and neuroscience, as these depictions can have lasting effects on audiences' understanding of these topics.

Fortunately, it is possible to make stories more scientifically accurate without any loss of drama or storytelling magic. It may even make these stories better. For example, clearing memory Star Trek The episode did a good job of distinguishing episodic memories from procedural memories, that is, between memories related to personal history and memories of how to perform a physical task. Characters who did not know who they were could still perform tasks they had been trained to do, such as engaging in melee combat or piloting a spaceship. This reflects the symptoms of patients with medial temporal lobe damage, which may impair episodic memory but spare procedural memory (because the latter is housed in the cerebellum, a distinct part of the brain). The on-screen moments where the characters showed off their skills despite being confused about their identities were some of the most interesting and powerful scenes.

To ensure more success stories like this, the writers should invite more psychologists and neuroscientists into the writers' room. We are more than willing! For this reason, we have high hopes for the upcoming 2015 sequel. Upside down, a touching film about how emotions shape development. Psychologists and neuroscientists consulted on the original film, allowing him to delve deeper into how these processes work. Although unrealistic in some ways – such as personifications of emotions using a control board to manage our reactions – this film highlighted the role emotions play in shaping our personality as we grow up.

Lack of guidance stands in the way of this simple suggestion. Almost no PBS episodes Science in cinema presented any aspect of psychological science. It also doesn't get any space in Lab Coats in Hollywooda 2013 book detailing the interaction between filmmakers and their scientific advisors. But we hope that with growing interest from film producers and advice from experts, brain science will finally get its turn on the red carpet.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the opinions expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily those of Scientific American.