Reality makes you dumb — that's our four-word distillation of the groundbreaking new study by neuroscientists at NYU, who compared a cross-section of work by Hitchcock, Leone and Larry David (!) in an attempt to determine stimulation patterns for movie and TV viewers. Their findings revealed that participants' highest "inter-subject correlation" — i.e. the most commonly stimulating editing and direction — occurred for viewers watching an expertly crafted Hitchcock TV entry, followed closely by The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Curb Your Enthusiasm brought up the rear with an 18% ISC, essentially suggesting that its loose, pseudo-reality format defied subjects' attention spans. "Our data suggest that achieving a tight control over viewers' brains during a movie requires, in most cases, intentional construction of the film's sequence through aesthetic means," the researchers wrote. "The fact that Hitchcock was able to orchestrate the responses of so many different brain regions, turning them on and off at the same time across all viewers, may provide neuroscientific evidence for his notoriously famous ability to master and manipulate viewers' minds." But how many DVD box sets did he sell? Eh? That's right. Hack. [Science Daily via THND]