Become 23 percent smarter by Watching 3D movies

Are you smart? Of course I know you can’t answer No to that. So we agree you are smart – but are you smart enough? Are you at the peak of your smartness potential? No one is. Our brain is so big, that even the smartest people use only ten percent of their brain (that’s a myth). Although recent brain research works indicate that almost every part of the brain is used on a normal day, the brain by it’s nature cannot be exhausted – somehow. The brain can and will always learn new things, and can even be trained to learn smarter. One of the tools that can help you train your brain to be smarter is to read informative literature (which Kenyans don’t do), play strategic and video games, exercise, register to online causes, watch educative YouTube content, and eat a lot of fish. The latest addition on what you can do to improve the learning capability of your brain is to watch 3D movies.

Every time new technologies are introduced for our consumption, neuroscientists, psychologists and psychiatrists are always interested in finding out how the technology affects our brain. There are those who want to find out how the new technologies affect our health, others are interested in their effects on our social life yet others are more interested on how those technologies affect our economic progress. For the 3D movies technologies, Patrick Fagan, Associate Lecturer at London’s Goldsmiths University and Professor Brendan Walker of the Thrill Laboratory set to find out the effects watching 3D might have on the brain immediately the 3D viewing experience was over and how much extra value people got while watching a film in 3D versus 2D.

smarter by watching 3d movies
A man watching 3D movie – Image courtesy of HI Consumption

“More than 100 people took part in an experiment where participants watched Disney film Big Hero 6 in either standard format or RealD 3D, as well as carrying out a brain-training-style test before and after seeing a segment from the film”, explains Irish Examiner.

“The methodology used to obtain these results was impressively high-tech. First, subjects were given a short series of cognitive and memory tests on a computer. These tests included remembering ever-growing series of numbers; writing in 60 seconds as many words as they could think of beginning with a particular letter; decoding as fast as possible a series of symbols based on a translation key; finding re-occurrences of a specific number in a huge number grid; distinguishing as quickly as possible between the letters O and Q when they popped up on screen; and answering a series of complicatedly worded True/False questions based around a series of geometric shapes”, writes John Archer in Forbes.

After watching the movies, all participants were tested for brain activity and emotional engagement during film viewing, cognitive processing and reaction time after film viewing. “As soon as the film clips were finished each test subject was led back to his or her computer and asked to repeat the cognitive tests [that had done before viewing the movie]. The differences in each subject’s performance between the first  and second series of tests then enabled the researchers to discern the relative cognitive boost enjoyed by the people who’d watched the 3D clip” Forbes reports. There was a 7% higher engagement with the movie for those watching in 3D compared to those watching in 2D, 23% increase in cognitive processing after viewing the movie and 11% increase in reaction time also after viewing the movie.

So, the results clearly tell us that one can become at least 23 percent smarter by watching 3D movies. No, you won’t be 23 percent smarter compared to when you don’t watch movies, but compared to when you watch only 2D movies. This point should be very clear. It has already been established that watching movies, especially movies with complex story lines, and those with educational content are capable of making you smarter than non-film viewers.

The reason you’ll be come smarter by watching 3D movies, faster, is, as Professor Brendan Walker’s test concluded, “3D films are more immersive, heighten the senses and induce emotional arousal — this, in turn, makes the brain run at quicker speeds.”

“It’s important to stress that the measured brain benefits of 3D viewing could only be confirmed to last for around 20 minutes during this experiment. But even being able to give yourself an edge for 20 minutes from watching a few minutes of 3D is a pretty startling discovery – and Fagan is convinced that regular exposure to 3D could function in much the same way as brain-training games, ultimately delivering an impact way beyond a mere 20-minute boost.”

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