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The Empathic Screen
Cinema and Neuroscience
by Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra Translator Frances Anderson
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Book Presentation:
• The first time that embodied simulation theory (triggered by the discovery of mirror neurons) has been applied to film studies
• Contains original empirical results which emphasize the relevance of film aesthetics and techniques,thus contributing to an update of classical film theory
• Maintains an historical and aesthetic approach to cinema, demonstrating how cognitive neuroscience and the humanities can find common ground for research and discussion
Why do people go to the movies? What does it mean to watch a movie? To what extent is the perceived fictional nature of movies different from our daily perception of the real world?
We live in a time where the power of images has strongly invaded our everyday life, and we need new instruments and methods to better understand our relationship with the virtual worlds we inhabit every day. Taking cinema as the beginning of our relationship with the world of moving images, and cognitive neuroscience as a paradigm to understand how the images engage us, The Empathic Screen develops a new theory of film experience, exploring our brain-body interaction when engaging with and watching a film. In this book, film theory and neuroscience meet to shed new light on cinema masterpieces, such as The Shining, The Silence of the Lambs, and Toy Story, and explore the great directors from the classical period to the present.
Taking a radical new approach to understanding the cinema, the book will be fascinating reading for cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, and film and media scholars.
About the authors:
Vittorio Gallese, Professor of Psychobiology, Department of Medicine and Surgery, Unit of Neuroscience. University of Parma, Italy, and Michele Guerra, Professor of Film Theory, University of Parma, Italy Translator Frances Anderson Vittorio Gallese, MD and trained neurologist, is Professor of Psychobiology at the University of Parma, Italy and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar, Dept. of Art History and Archeology, Columbia University, New York, USA. Cognitive neuroscientist, his research focuses on the relation between the sensory-motor system and cognition by investigating the neurobiological and bodily grounding of intersubjectivity, empathy, language and aesthetics. He is the author of more than 200 scientific publications and two books. Michele Guerra is Professor of Film Theory at the University of Parma. Authors of more than one hundred publications among articles and books, his work mainly focuses on the relationship between cognitive neuroscience and cinema, American and Italian film history. He is an Associate Editor of the film journal "Fata Morgana", and member of the Scientific Board of "Cinergie", "La Valle dell'Eden", and "Arabeschi".
Press Reviews:
"Gallese (a psychobiologist) and Guerra (a film theorist) use the apparatus of neuroscience to argue that movies "evoke" motor resonance in spectators. They support their argument by using the concepts of "mirror neurons" and "embodied simulation." The authors focus solely on camera movement, editing, and close-ups, ignoring montage sequences (e.g., the shower scene in Psycho) and sound (e.g., musical scores)." - J. Belton, emeritus, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, Choice
"The Empathic Screen is devoted to examining how our natural tendency to simulate our fellow humans' actions affects the experience of watching (and hearing!) films. The authors attempt to build bridges between cognitivist, neuroscientific research, and philosophical traditions that tend to privilege "nurture" over "nature." Cognitivist-oriented film scholars will particularly enjoy the detailed analyses of film scenes. Gallese and Guerra show how these scenes trigger precognitive, embodied simulation through camera movements, close-ups of facial expressions and bodily experiences, editing, sound effects, or a combination of all these techniques. The book's discussion of experimental findings contains technical terminology and diagrams that the authors always summarize in accessible terms. This book represents the growing influence, not just of cognitive film scholarship, but of cognitive science in the humanities." - Charles Forceville, PhD, University of Amsterdam
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
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