TV, Right/Left Brain
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The recent post with the revolving lady, inspired this. I happened to be Googling on "TV Addiction" and found an article and this excerpt was of interest:
Watching TV may feel relaxing. TV has a remarkable ability to shut out the rest of our crazy world. All the worldʹs problems vanish as your TV program wraps you in a cozy Never Land; or so it seems.
In fact, your brain goes into an alpha brainwave state. This state feels relaxing. You become less alert and more passive. The state is comparable to hypnosis. Worse, your lowered alertness and feelings of passivity do not end after you turn the TV off. The culprit for this effect is most likely the cathode ray tubes in your TV monitors, which can produce a flicker that your conscious mind does not detect.
According to a Scientific American study, “survey participants commonly reflect that television has somehow absorbed or sucked out their energy, leaving them depleted. They report that they have more difficulty concentrating after viewing than before. 45
Other studies have linked the passivity to the left side of the brain shutting down. The left‐brain is primarily responsible for logical analysis and thought. In the Mulholland experiment, 10 children watched their favorite television program, while the researchers monitored their brainwave patterns. The researchers expected that the children would show a preponderance of beta waves. This would indicate that they were involved and responding to their favorite programs. Instead, they stayed in alpha. “They just sat back. They stayed almost the whole time in alpha. That meant that while they were
watching they were not reacting, not orienting, not focusing, just spaced out,” said Dr. Eric Peper.46
Similarly, in the early 1980’s, researchers in Australia found that the left‐brain ʺsort of went to sleepʺ once TV was switched on, but the right brain was busy ʺstoring information in its memory bankʺ.47 Scandalously, no one was able to follow up on these experiments. Researchers could not get funding. Aside from a few early experiments in the US and a few more in the 1970’s and early 1980’s in Australia, the neurophysiology of watching television has been relatively unexplored, even though the experiments discovered clear and frightening effects.More here: http://www.trashyourtv.com/ebooks/ATATV.pdf
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But... I watch my movies in a projector (no cathode tube involved) and I still become hypnotized...
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Must be the flicker in the "refresh rate"
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Oh, yeah, now that I remember, movies have a refresh rate of 24fps, which is not enough to fully trick your brain into believing what you see is reality, but instead it creates a dreamy atmosphere... I guess I have to stop rendering my videos at 30fps...
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