Take heed, cinephiles!  You know how the eyes of your friends and relatives tend to glaze over when you talk about your favorite movies' editing and directing style?  It turns out you're not just gassing on pretentiously – you're really describing how the human brain works!

ScienceDaily reports that, according to a new scientific study carried out in Projections:  The Journal for Movies and Mind (no, we never heard of it either), researchers from NYU and elsewhere have discovered that not only do movies exert a powerful hold on higher brain functions, but also that the movie's style, content, editing and direction can make a considerable impact on its neurological effects. 

The study, believed to be the first quantitative neuroscientific assessment of the impact of motion pictures on the human brain, was carried out using MRI scanners, inter-subject correlation analysis, and other things we dropped out of college to avoid learning about. Using a baseline of a ten-minute, unedited clip of a concert in Washington Square Park (we'd have suggested Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny), the researches determined that films exert a "tight grip on viewers' minds" through a "sequence of perceptual, emotional and cognitive states, which stimulate overall brain activity.  In the test, highly detailed, constructed aesthetics – such as in the films of Sergio Leone and Alfred Hitchcock – engaged the minds of test subjects the most. 

It's good to know all of our movie geekery over the years is actually improving our minds, but you know there had to be a downside, and here it is:  according to the article, the study "may serve as a valuable method for the film industry to better assess its products, and offer a new method for exploring how the brain works."  Even as we speak, someone is in a pitch meeting, explaining how the new Uwe Boll video game movie is actually an important neurological tool.