Michele Guerra

Embodied music cognition predicts that our understanding of human-made sounds relates to our experience of making the same or similar movements and sounds, which involves imitation of the source of visual and auditory information. This embodiment of sound may lead to numerous kinetic cross-modal correspondences (CMCs). This article investigates music experience in participants with a non-professionally trained music background across three musical dimensions: Contour (Ascending, Descending, Flat), Vertical Density (Low, Medium, High), and Note Pattern (Binary, Ternary, Quaternary). In order that stimuli should reflect contemporary musical usage yet be subject to a high degree of experimental control, 27 ten-second digital piano tracks were created in collaboration with a film composer. In Study 1, participants were asked to rate the stimuli for perceived Direction, Rotation, Movement, and Emotional and Physical Involvement. We test the effects of these factors in terms of the following theories: general and vocal embodied responses to music, the Ecological Theory of Rotating Sounds, and the Shared Affective Motion Experience model of emotion induction. Results for Study 1 were consistent with theories of general and vocal embodied responses to music, as well as with theories of embodied emotional contagion in music. Study 1 also revealed potential confounds in the stimuli, which were further investigated in Study 2 with a new set of participants rating the stimuli for perceived Pitch, Loudness, and Speed. Results for Study 2 served to dissociate intrinsic features of the stimuli from CMCs. Taken together, the two studies reveal a range of embodied CMCs. Although there are limitations to a perceptual study such as this, these stimuli stand to benefit future research in further investigating the embodiment of musical motion.

In the last decades, the contribution of cognitive neuroscience to fi lm studies has been invested in at least three diff erent lines of research. The fi rst one has to do with fi lm theory and history: the new attention, inspired by cognitive neuroscience, to the viewer's brain-body, the sensorimotor basis of fi lm cognition, and the forms of embodied simulation elicited by the cinematic experience has stimulated a profound rethinking of a relevant part of the theoretical discourse on cinema, from the very beginning of the twentieth century to the most recent refl ections within cognitive fi lm studies and the phenomenology of fi lm. The second line has to do with the intersubjective relationship between the movie-its style, rhythm, characters, and narrative-and the viewer, and it is characterized by an empirical approach that yields very interesting results, useful for rethinking and problematizing our ideas about editing, camera movements, and fi lm reception. The third line concerns a possible experimental approach to the new life of fi lm, focusing on the digital image, the innovative forms of technological mediation, and the inscription of a new fi lm spectatorship within a completely diff erent medial frame. The goal of this special issue is to off er insights across these lines of research.

"the invention of cinema, the art that Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra so beautifully analyze as scientists and humanists in The Empathic Screen, Cinema and Neuroscience. Theirs is an indispensable book."
Antonio Damasio, Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, University of Southern California, Author of The Strange Order of Things

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.

One key feature of film consists in its power to bodily engage the viewer. Previous research has suggested lens and camera movements to be among the most effective stylistic devices involved in such engagement. In an EEG experiment we assessed the role of such movements in modulating specific spectators´neuralspectators´neural and experiential responses, likely reflecting such engagement. We produced short video clips of an empty room with a still, a zooming and a moving camera (steadicam) that might simulate the movement of an observer in different ways. We found an event related desynchronization of the beta components of the rolandic mu rhythm that was stronger for the clips produced with steadicam than for those produced with a still or zooming camera. No equivalent modulation in the attention related occipital areas was found, thus confirming the sensorimotor nature of spectators´neuralspectators´neural responses to the film clips. The present study provides the first empirical evidence that filmic means such as camera movements alone can modulate spectators' bodily engagement with film.

Il cinema in quanto arte esprime una delle caratteristiche più
distintive della natura umana e oggi il film è un possibile oggetto
di indagine per le neuroscienze cognitive per una serie di
buoni motivi. Primo, perché come tutte le forme d’arte il film
esemplifica una forma mediata di intersoggettività ponendosi
come mediatore tra i suoi creatori e i suoi fruitori. Secondo, perché il
guardare un film presuppone un tipo di percezione la cui relazione con
la percezione “naturale” è oggetto di un intenso dibattito. Terzo, perché
come ogni altra forma di espressione artistica, il film permette di
studiare uno dei molti mondi possibili che possiamo abitare, ponendo
così al centro la questione del rapporto tra “reale” e “virtuale”, tra il
mondo prosaico che abitiamo durante le nostre occupazioni quotidiane
e i mondi immaginari della finzione artistica.

In spite of their striking differences with real-life perception, films are perceived and understood without effort. Cognitive film theory attributes this to the system of continuity editing, a system of editing guidelines outlining the effect of different cuts and edits on spectators. A major principle in this framework is the 180° rule, a rule recommendation that, to avoid spectators' attention to the editing, two edited shots of the same event or action should not be filmed from angles differing in a way that expectations of spatial continuity are strongly violated. In the present study, we used high-density EEG to explore the neural underpinnings of this rule. In particular , our analysis shows that cuts and edits in general elicit early ERP component indicating the registration of syntactic violations as known from language, music, and action processing. However , continuity edits and cuts-across the line differ from each other regarding later components likely to be indicating the differences in spatial remapping as well as in the degree of conscious awareness of one's own perception. Interestingly, a time–frequency analysis of the occipital alpha rhythm did not support the hypothesis that such differences in processing routes are mainly linked to visual attention. On the contrary, our study found specific modulations of the central mu rhythm ERD as an indicator of sensorimotor activity, suggesting that sensorimotor networks might play an important role. We think that these findings shed new light on current discussions about the role of attention and embodied perception in film perception and should be considered when explaining spectators' different experience of different kinds of cuts.

Camera movements are considered a key element for the intersubjective relation between viewer and screen; nonetheless, their concrete effect on spectators’ experience still lacks the attention it deserves. This paper promotes an embodied approach to the study of camera movements, aiming to better understand the role of motor cognition during the film experience by analyzing the effects of camera movements on viewers’ motor cortex activation. We present an empirical high-density EEG neuroscientific study on camera movements, investigating viewers’ brain motor responses to different techniques like zooming, and the use of a dolly and steadicam. This is triggered by the idea that each movement implies a particular form of physical relation between the audience and the movie. Indeed the experiment showed that the Steadicam determined the strongest activation in viewers’ motor cortex, providing first empirical ground to the notion of the capacity of the camera to simulate the virtual presence of the viewer inside the movie. This study shows how cognitive neuroscience can contribute to a better understanding of film style and techniques. Finally, this research demonstrates how film technique can be useful to cognitive neuroscience, by enabling the simulation of observers’ movements and, in so doing, allowing a novel approach to the study of action-perception links.

Brief Description:  - Our book is the outcome of five years of intense dialogue, discussions, theoretical and empirical work, jointly carried out by a cognitive neuroscientist and a film scholar and it offers a new multidisciplinary approach to images and film. The main aim of the book is to answer the following questions: Why do people go to the movies? What does it mean to watch a movie? To which extent the perceived fictional nature of movies is different from our daily perception of the real world?
The book proposes that film art, based on the interaction between the viewer and the world on the screen, and often described in terms of immersion, impression of reality, simulation and involvement of the viewer’s body in the fictitious world she inhabits, can be reconsidered from a neuroscientific perspective which looks at the brain and to its tight relation to the body. We propose a new model of perception – embodied simulation – elaborated on the basis of three decades of neuroscientific investigations demonstrating the role played in cognition by sensorimotor and affect-related brain circuits. The book uses Embodied simulation theory to approach and discuss key issues on the relation between spectators, images and films, like film style, camera movements, montage, close-ups, real and fictional worlds, new technologies and media and their impact on our mind and behavior. Scenes from famous films, like Notorius, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Persona, The Silence of the Lambs, Toy Story, etc. are described and analyzed from our multidisciplinary approach and used as case studies to discuss our proposal.
The approach is radically new. It addresses a large audience made of film and media studies scholars, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, students and lay people who love cinema.

Outline – The book is made of an Introduction, six chapters, a Glossary explaining to the general reader some of the notions and concepts of film theory and neuroscience employed throughout the text, an index of names and a bibliography. The book contains 49 B/W figures.

The Introduction presents our main hypothesis and outlines how it will be addressed in the following chapters. It clarifies why neuroscience is important for our understanding of why we like films and how films engage spectators, provided it adopts an embodied perspective, where the brain is not detached from the body and from its relation to the world.
The First chapter is entitled: ‘A new model of perception: Embodied simulation. It provides the key neuroscientific data enabling the reader to understand how neuroscience will be used in the next chapters to address images and film. Its subheadings are: a) Cinema, brain and empathy, where we discuss the reception of film and introduce the notion of empathy and its history; b) Body, brain, neuroscience, where we we provide a critical account of neuroscience and detail our specific approach; c)  From classic cognitivism to embodied cognition, where we outline and criticize two mainstream approaches to social cognition, classic cognitivism and evolutionary psychology; d) Motor Cognition: Movements and motor outcomes, where we explain why and how we should reconceive the cognitive role of the motor system and its role in visual perception; e) Motor Cognition: Area F4 and peri-personal space, where we provide evidence on the role of the motor system in mapping space; f) Motor Cognition: Canonical neurons and objects ‘ready to hand’, where we discuss canonical neurons and their role in object perception; g) Motor Cognition: Mirror neurons and mirror mechanisms, where we introduce mirror neurons in macaques and mirror mechanisms in humans and outline their role in social perception; h) Emotions, sensations and embodied simulation, where we describe the role of embodied simulation in the perception of the emotions and sensations of others; i) The subject as corporeality between reality and imagination: Liberated embodied simulation, where we introduce the aesthetic specificity of our model of visual perception and explain how it could be applied to film viewing and more generally to fiction; j) Brain-body and the big screen, where we discuss how neuroscience has been applied so far to study film and cinema.
The Second chapter is entitled: False movements and impossible gazes. In this chapter we discuss how cinema is able to produce the sense of body immanence, allowing spectators to identify with the characters they see on the screen. Its subheadings are: a) Who did move?, where we analyze famous scenes for Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorius, Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake and Delmer Daves’s Dark Passage to discuss how cinema is able to create a subjective perspective; b) Resonating with movement, where we discuss the pertinence of neuroscience to the issues introduced in the preceding pages; c) Positions, where we address the mind-movie problem; d) Sherlock Jr., where the problem of spatial segregation between screen and spectators is addressed by discussing scenes from Buster Keaton’s film Sherlock Jr.
The Third chapter is entitled: Camera movements and motor cognition and addresses the role of camera movement in generating spectators’ immersion in the narrated film plot. Its subheadings are: a) Style, where we trace the bodily origins of the notion of style and discuss how film style has been addressed by film scholars; b) Moving the camera, where we address the stylistic role of camera movements in film history; c) Kubrick interlude, where we discuss from our perspective several films of this author, like Barry Lyndon, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket and introduce the steadycam; d) Moving mirrors, where we present our empirical results on the role of camera movements in generating spectators immersion, empathy and identification with film characters.
The Fourth chapter is entitled: The cut and harmony. It deals with montage. Its subheadings are: a) Calumet City, where we discuss from our perspective parallel montage in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs; Continuity, where continuity editing is addressed by relating to several film scholars and authors like Jospeh Anderson, Lev Kuleshov, Jean Epstein; c) Action, action, action!, where the role of action in montage is addressed by referring to early film theorists like Winthrop Sargent, Henry Albert Phillips, Vachel Lindsay, and the novel writer Paul Auster; d) A crack in the mirror, where we introduce and discuss our empirical neuroscientific results on montage.
The Fifth chapter is entitled: The face and the hands. It discusses close-ups of the face and body in relation to film and neuroscience. Its subheadings are: a) Self-touching in front of a mirror, where we introduce and discuss the opening scenes of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona; b) The somatosensory system and multimodality, where we address the notion of multimodality, and explain how the brain processes touch and pain; c) The social perception of touch, where we explain how the brain processes the vision of touch; The sensible film, where scenes from Jean Luc Godard’s Une Femme Marriée are analyzed and  propose how the notion of ‘haptic vision’ discussed by film theorists can be approached from a neuroscientific perspective; d) Animations, where we propose that our model of embodied simulation can be used to explain the sense of presence generated by animation films, analyzing Jan Svankmejer’s films and Pixar’s Toy Story.
The Sixth Chapter is entitled: New mediations, new films, new experiments. It projects our proposal into the future by discussing new digital technologies and mediations and their impact on film and its reception. Its subheadings are: a) New positions, where we introduce the future of film and cinema in the light of new technologies and the few empirical studies addressing these issues; b) Digital presence, where we propose how our model can help formulating new theoretical and empirical approaches; d) Death on the chat line, where we introduce the film Unfriended and discuss how new mediations of filmic content reshape our relation to the film; e) A new filmic grammar, where we introduce action cams and their new impact on film viewing; f) End of the screen?, where we envision how the new filmic mediation may generate a new form of film reception.

Next is a Glossary of terms with 30 entries listed in alphabetical order, from Action cams to Zoom.
The book ends with a bibliography and a list of names.

Outstanding Features List – The book is ambitious as it proposes a radically new approach to cinema and film. It doesn’t ask ‘what is cinema’, but ‘why do we love films’ and ‘how do they work’. The use of neuroscience is novel as it showcases an integrated approach that can purchase a double gain: on the one hand, by applying neuroscience to film reception it allows to reformulate and redefine several aspects of film theory; on the other, by discussing brain function against the background of film theory, it helps our understanding of the brain-body contribution to the unique human capacity to constantly inhabit the real world and the parallel worlds of fiction. The book avoids scholar jargon and it offers the opportunity to a wide audience of readers to get deeper into the understanding of film and of the brain-body, combining clarity with intellectual depth.

"Anni Settanta. La rivoluzione nei linguaggi dell'arte"
a cura di C. Casero e E. Di Raddo
Con saggi di: Fabio Belloni, Cristina Casero, Elena Di Raddo, Michele Guerra, Caterina Iaquinta, Elisabetta Longari, Kevin McManus, Lucilla Meloni, Francesco Tedeschi, Francesca Zanella

The discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) has influenced the debate on action, gestures, motor and spatial knowledge, emotions and empathy, all aspects that in recent years have been deeply reconsidered within film studies. In the last years, we have been focusing on the role embodied simulation (ES) – a theory triggered by the discovery of MNs – plays during film experience, referring mainly to film style and techniques. ES shows that people reuse their own mental states or processes represented with a bodily format in functionally attributing them to others. We map objects, space and the actions of others onto our own motor representations, as well as others’ emotions and sensations onto our own viscero-motor and sensory-motor representations.
Of course, both the mediated experience created by the screen and the re-invention of a realistic world within the virtual space of that “window” modulate in very interesting ways our reactions and behaviors when confronted with the diegetic world of film. The neuroscientific approach to film studies has to be thought of as the last emergence of a long tradition of study, which has been considering cinema as a machine capable of involving its viewers and shaping up experiences at a time new and familiar. In our talk, we start from Jean Epstein’s L’intelligence d’une machine to re-discuss the vital forms of cinema, considering cognitive neuroscience as the meta-field where some of the most insightful views of this theoretical approach could converge.
The potential relevance of ES to film experience and the empathic engagement it accompanies will be discussed by reviewing theoretical and empirical work from our lab on the experience of moving images, with particular emphasis on camera movements and montage. Our point is that ES can enrich our understanding of film expression and its reception, by studying their neural and bodily components. At the same time, it could contribute to a theoretical and philosophical re-consideration of a film anthropology which finds its forefather in figures like Eisenstein, Epstein, and Morin.

One key feature of film consists in its power to bodily engage the viewer. Previous research has suggested lens and camera movements to be among the most effective stylistic devices involved in such engagement. In an EEG experiment we assessed the role of such movements in modulating specific spectators´neuralspectators´neural and experiential responses, likely reflecting such engagement. We produced short video clips of an empty room with a still, a zooming and a moving camera (steadicam) that might simulate the movement of an observer in different ways. We found an event related desynchronization of the beta components of the rolandic mu rhythm that was stronger for the clips produced with steadicam than for those produced with a still or zooming camera. No equivalent modulation in the attention related occipital areas was found, thus confirming the sensorimotor nature of spectators´neuralspectators´neural responses to the film clips. The present study provides the first empirical evidence that filmic means such as camera movements alone can modulate spectators' bodily engagement with film.

"Time Machine: Cinematic Temporalities" / Palazzo del Governatore, Parma, Italie, 12 January - 3 May 2020 (Parma 2020 | Italian Capital of Culture).
Curated by Antonio Somaini with Éline Grignard and Marie Rebecchi, from an idea by Michele Guerra. Associate curator: Antoine Prévost-Balga. Research and iconography: Adèle Yon. Graphic design: Bureau Roman Seban. Film editing: Margaux Serre. Production: Solares Fondazione delle Arti (Andrea Gambetta, Stefano Caselli, Carlotta Gruzza). Publisher: Skira.

Specifically conceived for the cultural program of "Parma Capitale Italiana della Cultura 2020" – “La cultura batte il tempo" [“Culture beats/defeats time”], the exhibition "Time Machine: Cinematic Temporalities" tackles the ways in which cinema and other moving-image media such as video and video installations have transformed, throughout their history, our perception of time.
Moving across the 25 rooms of the Palazzo del Governatore, the visitor experiences a kind of “time travel” made possible by different cinematic techniques of time manipulation such as slow motion and acceleration, loops and reversals, time-lapse and freeze frame, multiple exposures, stop-motion animation, as well as different variations of the operation of montage. By the end, one idea becomes clear: through their material supports, their analog and digital technologies, and the restless creativity of the artists, experimental filmmakers and film directors that have engaged with them, cinema and other moving-image media have made time malleable, exhibiting a plasticity of time that led the French film director and theorist Jean Epstein to describe cinema as “a machine for thinking time” (L’Intelligence d’une machine, 1946).
Organized in four sections (1. Flows, 2. Instants, 3. Re-montage, 4. Oscillations) which weave together images stemming from the different areas of early, classical and contemporary cinema, scientific cinema and experimental cinema, video art and video installations—with several incursions into the history of photography—the exhibition covers a time frame that spans from 1895 to the future that lies just ahead of us: from the year of the first public screening of the Lumière’s Cinématographe and of the first publication of H.G. Wells’s time-travel fiction “The Time Machine”, to the new nonhuman temporalities of moving images produced by artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networks.