Our brains have to work hard when we watch movies — to observe what's happening on screen, interpret the dialogue and follow the plots. Now, Popular Science reports on MIT research into how different movies show up on MRI scans. The team used a previously collected dataset including whole-brain scans from 176 adults who watched 60 minutes' worth of clips. "When the film’s content was difficult to follow or more ambiguous like during 'Inception,' activity was heightened in executive control brain regions. However, during more easy to understand scenes, the brain regions with specific functions — such as language processing — were the most dominated," writes Laura Baisas. See the second link for the full study in the Cell Press journal "Neuron."