Behind the Screens™
Behind the Screens™ is the LinkedIn newsletter from Learning From Hollywood™—a companion to the broader work and an ongoing exploration of the science, psychology, and filmmaking principles that can offer new ways to think about eLearning design.
The Science Behind the Screens
Neurocinematics sits at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and film studies, examining how the brain responds to audiovisual experiences.
Research by Uri Hasson and colleagues helped establish the field by using fMRI and inter-subject correlation (ISC) to study how different viewers’ brains respond while watching the same film. Their findings demonstrated that filmmaking choices—including content, editing, and directing style—can influence patterns of brain activity and eye movements across viewers.
The field continues to develop. Contemporary neurocinematic research examines audiovisual perception through methods including fMRI, EEG, eye tracking, and other measures of neural and physiological response, exploring areas such as attention, prediction, emotion, narrative processing, and the perception of cinematic structure.
Behind the Screens™ draws on this research as a lens—not as a claim that neuroscience has produced a formula for better eLearning, but as an invitation to ask what we can learn from the way audiovisual experiences shape human perception and cognition.
Research Foundation
Hasson, U., Landesman, O., Knappmeyer, B., Vallines, I., Rubin, N., & Heeger, D. J. (2008). Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film. Projections, 2(1), 1–26.
This foundational work used fMRI and inter-subject correlation to examine viewers' neural responses during free viewing of films and proposed neurocinematics as an interdisciplinary field connecting cognitive neuroscience and film studies.
Hasson, U., et al. (2004). Intersubject Synchronization of Cortical Activity During Natural Vision. Science, 303(5664), 1634–1640.
This study demonstrated that viewers can show synchronized patterns of cortical activity while freely watching the same film, including activity in visual, auditory, and association cortices.
Andreu-Sánchez, C., Martín-Pascual, M. Á., & Delgado-García, J. M. (2025). Editorial: Neurocinematics: How the Brain Perceives Audiovisuals. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 19, 1719407.
This contemporary research topic demonstrates that neurocinematics remains an active interdisciplinary field, using neuroscientific and psychophysiological methods to investigate how the brain processes audiovisual experiences—including cinematic structure, attention, emotion, prediction, and immersive media.
Gallese, V., & Guerra, M. (2019). The Empathic Screen: Cinema and Neuroscience. Oxford University Press.
This interdisciplinary work brings neuroscience and film theory together to examine how cinematic form engages the brain and body. Drawing on embodied simulation, the authors explore how movement, camera perspective, editing, faces, and other elements of film contribute to the viewer's embodied and affective experience.
What We Explore
Behind the Screens™ examines the elements that shape how people experience, process, and remember learning. These are some of the questions behind the ideas explored in the newsletter.
How do we earn and sustain attention?
Can the environment help teach?
What should the learner notice—and what can we leave out?
How do we make learners want the answer?
What will remain after the experience ends?
What happens when expectation meets reality?
Explore the Thinking
Behind the Screens™ explores what happens when we look at learning through a cinematic lens. What can Hollywood teach us about earning and sustaining attention? How might an environment communicate information without stopping the experience to explain it? What happens when curiosity comes before content, when learners are given a reason to discover rather than simply told the answer?
The exploration extends to memory and prediction as well. Stories can make information memorable by giving it context, consequence, and meaning. And when learners form an expectation before discovering what actually happens, the difference between prediction and outcome can create a powerful moment for attention and reflection.
Stay Behind the Screens
Behind the Screens™ continues the conversation through an ongoing LinkedIn newsletter exploring neuroscience, psychology, and filmmaking principles through the lens of eLearning design.
New ideas. New perspectives. New ways to think about the learner’s experience.
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