Zacks’ talk ties movies to neuroscience

Jeffrey Zacks, professor and associate chair of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will explain how and why television and movies can have such strong effects on our brains in a Mirowitz Center online program, co-sponsored with St. Louis NORC and the St. Louis Jewish Film Festival

Zacks
Zacks

The Zoom event, which is free and open to the public, is 10 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 2. An RSVP is required by 5 p.m. Feb. 1. To register, call 314-733-9813; email joliver@mirowitzcenter.org; or visit the Mirowitz Center website.

In his book, “Flicker: Your Brain on Movies,” Zacks, who is also a professor of radiology at the School of Medicine, uses popular movies as case studies to explore what the latest neuroscience research says about how we experience moving images. 

“For every thing that I as a psychologist or neuroscientist can tell filmmakers about what’s going on in their movies, they can tell me three things about what’s going on in the brains of my research subjects,” he said in an interview about his research.