Estimation of Emotional Arousal Changes of a Group of Individuals during Movie Screening Using Steady-State Visual-Evoked Potential

Neurocinematics
is an emerging discipline in neuroscience, which aims to provide new filmmaking
techniques by analyzing the
brain activities of a
group of audiences. Several neurocinematics studies attempted to track temporal changes in
mental states during movie screening; however, it is still needed to develop efficient
and robust electroencephalography (EEG) features for tracking brain
states precisely over a long period. This study proposes a novel method for
estimating emotional arousal changes in a group of individuals during movie
screening by employing steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), which is a
widely used EEG response elicited by the presentation of periodic visual
stimuli. Previous studies have
reported that the emotional arousal of each individual modulates the strength of SSVEP responses. Based on
this phenomenon, movie clips were superimposed on a background, eliciting an SSVEP response with a specific frequency. Two
emotionally arousing movie clips were presented to six healthy male
participants, while
EEG signals were recorded from the occipital channels. We then investigated whether the movie scenes that
elicited higher SSVEP responses coincided well with those rated as the most impressive scenes by 37 viewers in a separate
experimental session. Our results showed that the SSVEP response averaged
across six participants could accurately predict the overall impressiveness of
each movie, evaluated with a much larger group of individuals.

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神经电影学（Neurocinematics）是神经科学领域的新兴学科，旨在通过分析观众群体的大脑活动，研发全新的电影制作技术。已有多项神经电影学研究尝试追踪电影放映过程中心理状态的时序变化，但目前仍需开发高效且鲁棒的脑电图（electroencephalography, EEG）特征，以在较长时段内精准追踪大脑状态。本研究提出一种新颖方法，通过稳态视觉诱发电位（steady-state visual evoked potential, SSVEP）——一种由周期性视觉刺激诱发的经典脑电图响应——来估计电影放映期间群体个体的情绪唤醒变化。既往研究已表明，个体的情绪唤醒水平会调节SSVEP响应的强度。基于这一现象，本研究将电影片段叠加于背景之上，以诱发特定频率的SSVEP响应。实验向6名健康男性受试者呈现两段具有情绪唤醒性的电影片段，同时从枕叶通道记录脑电图信号。随后，我们探究了诱发更高SSVEP响应的电影场景，是否与另一实验环节中37名观众评定为最令人印象深刻的场景高度契合。研究结果显示，6名受试者的平均SSVEP响应能够准确预测由更大群体评估得出的每段电影的整体令人印象深刻程度。