A viewer’s brain activity told scientists when characters in the film (500) Days of Summer were on screen Collection Christophel / Alamy
Movie characters and locations can be deciphered by monitoring the activity of people’s neurons while they watch a film, a discovery that could help us understand how the brain stores memories as they are being made.
A deep brain structure called the hippocampus, which is critical for memory, contains neurons that encode the identity of objects, such as tools or buildings. The cells involved then respond to stimuli depicting those objects. But a lot of our knowledge…
