Halloween is probably my favorite holidays of the year. I
can sit and watch horror movies all day without hesitation! Besides all of the
brilliant classics out there like Nightmare On Elm Street and Scream, my
favorite horror film right now is Sinister. It involves an ancient pagan
Babylonian deity that consumes the souls of children and essentially makes them
kill their families in sickening ways. Twisted but so intriguing and scary! A
few nights ago I made a friend of mine watch it and she was absolutely horrified.
Closing her eyes during the anticipated horror scenes with her heart beating
out of her chest. This led me to question what the difference was between us.
What is happening in my brain to make me love horror movies as much as she
hated them? I did some research.
People can fall into two categories when watching movies: high
sensation seekers and low sensation seekers. In a study by Straube et al., high
and low sensation seekers were shown horror movie scenes and neutral movie
scenes to analyze the differences in brain activation. They picked scenes from
movies such as The Shining, Aliens, Silence of the Lambs and The Others (all
amazing movies you should watch). High sensation seekers, like myself, have a
significant increase in brain activation when exposed to horror movie scenes as
shown by fMRI scans. They specifically showed high brain activation in the
right thalamus and the right anterior insula, which are involved in corticol
arousal, emotion, and self-awareness amongst other things. In low sensation
seekers, there was brain activation of those areas but it was much less. When
these sensation seekers were exposed to neutral scenes they showed less
activation than low sensation seekers decreasing their insular activation and
disrupting the optimal homeostatic level of interoceptive sensation. The idea
is that because high sensation seekers experience this hypoactivation of those
brain regions when exposed to low intense stimulation, they seek to compensate
for it. This is why they exhibit hyperactivation and intense sensation when
watching a horror movie, which is what they prefer. Low sensation seekers,
however, still exhibit activation during neutral scenes because they are
already anticipating danger and increased anxiety. So next time you are trying
to force someone to watch a horror movie (as I do all the time), remember they
are not a chicken, they truly are terrified!
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.20843/epdf
This is very interesting, but I can't say extremely surprising that areas of the brain respond differently in different people to external stimuli. What really interests me is whether this high sensation seeker and low sensation seeker titles apply to other exhilarating activities as well. I would definitely class myself as a low sensation seeker when it comes to horror movies, but am pretty fond of other activities that I would assume would classify as high sensation seeker such as roller coasters, skydiving, and racing ATVs. So I wonder why I am fond of those types of thrills, but not horror movies? I would assume some of the same brain areas that you mentioned that are aroused during horror movies are also aroused in the activities I described, but maybe in different amounts? I would guess that other parts of the limbic system, such as the hippocampus, which are involved in memories, plays a part in this as well. Very interesting to see how people's brains differ in terms of arousal and thrill-seeking.
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