Spaghetti western reveals differences between human and monkey brains A 'neurocinematic' comparison provides clues about evolution of the human brain In a 2004 study, Uri Hasson and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance to scan the brains of five participants as they watched a 30 minute clip from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. They found that the film activated widespread regions of the cerebral cortex, especially in the visual and auditory parts of the brain, and that the activation patterns were remarkably similar in all of them. This high degree of synchronicity led the researchers to the conclusion that films can make their viewers' brains tick collectively; it also led to a new field called "neurocinematics," which aims to assess the similarities in participants' brain responses during film watching. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/neurophilosophy/2012/feb/05/1