Crime, action, comedy, or documentary? A person’s favorite movie genre reveals how their brain works. A new study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience compared movie preference data with brain activity recordings. Fans of action and comedy films reacted very strongly to negative emotional stimuli, while those who preferred documentaries, crime films, or thrillers had a much weaker response. Researchers delved into this interaction by analyzing data from 257 individuals. Participants provided information about their movie preferences. Researchers also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to analyze participants’ brain activity. While lying in an MRI scanner, subjects were shown fearful or angry faces and geometric shapes. Researchers focused on two regions of the brain. The first is the amygdala, which is responsible for processing important emotions. The other is the nucleus accumbens, known as the brain’s reward center. The results showed that action movie lovers were particularly susceptible to emotional stimuli and found such stimuli to be attractive. People who enjoyed comedies showed similar brain activity. Fans of crime, thriller, and documentary films had a significantly lower response than participants in the other groups.
