FEATURED MIND: DR. DEACA

Mircea Valeriu Deaca teaches film analysis and theory, film history, and contemporary Romanian film in the Faculty of History, Department of Ancient History, Archaeology and History of Art at the University of Bucharest. In 2018 he benefitted from a Fulbright Grant for research with Literature and Mind at UCSB. He has a Ph.D. thesis on the carnival tradition and Federico Fellini’s films at the Paris 3 – Sorbonne nouvelle. A key focus of his research is the cognitive approach to film studies. Among his books are: The Carnival and Federico Fellini’s Films (2009), The Anatomy of Film (2013), Investigations in Cognitive Film Analysis (2015), and The Kitchen Scenes in the New Romanian Cinema (2017). He recently published a monographic study on the The Control Cycle in Film. Circular Coupling from Brain to Culture (2020). He hosts the international conference Cinema: Cognition and Arts since 2016.

Could you tell us a little bit about your latest book, The Control Cycle in Film: Circular Coupling from Brain to Culture, published by Sciendo this year?

The propositions and analyses presented in this study originate from the embodiment-of-the-mind hypothesis, i.e., the enactive approach in which cognition is the enactment of the world and of the mind. The central idea of the embodiment hypothesis is that it is unproductive to dissociate mind and body when we speak about mental phenomena. The mind and brain-body support and guide each other. The patterns and processes with which our body is familiar are constantly mapped upon the stimuli provided by the world. Humans engage with and grasp patterns and make sense of the surroundings by projecting the body relations and processes they experience at a conscious and unconscious level.

The question set up for examination is whether there is a cognitive model that underpins human sense-making in the context of film experience. The conceptual resources provided by Cognitive grammar (as elaborated by Ronald W. Langacker), the recent developments of the neuroscience of emotions (as advocated by Lawrence Barsalou, Lisa Feldman Barrett, and Giovanna Colombetti), the theory of attention advocated by Michael S. A. Graziano, and several suggestions from the embodied-enactive approach (in the works of Evan Thompson and Maxine Johnson-Smith) seemed particularly useful coordinates for this research composed of analytical reflections. The study focuses on the cognitive model based on the action of control, understood as an explanatory instrument for sense-making, and follows up with the possible applications in the domain of film analysis.

The behavior of cells that, at a fundamental foundational level, can be described as an instantiation of the control cycle, underpins the behavior of multicellular populations. Among the many organisms that observe this rule, the human brain, made up by populations of neurons engaged in temporary interactions, occupies a privileged role in the human ecological niche. The behavior based on the control cycle gives us the rules that tell us how networks of brain cells behave. Once you put millions of cells together, the simple mechanism of the control cycle constrains the cellular behavior that embodies cognitive phenomena. In other words, scaled up in complexity, this behavior gives us sense-making mechanisms that interconnect living organisms/ selves and the world. In other words, from the perspective of the embodied mind, the control mechanism plays a vital role in shaping the interaction between self and environment. Social interactions between minds are further constrained by the core biological mechanism of the control cycle.

This study, based on Ronald W. Langacker’s cognitive grammar semantics, and his model of the control cycle, elaborates the hypothesis that film exerts control over viewers’ brain activity as a function of movie conceptual and emotional content, perceptual patterns and editing constructions. These patterns mirror the neural dynamics of the neural populations of the brain engaged in mutual cycles of control and modulation. The control cycle is a dynamic binding mechanism based on categorization or possession that reunites two distinct elements in one integrated whole at the levels of perception, cognition, and emotion. Often the two components are circularly coupled in a bi-directional control

In cognitive grammar the control cycle is a construction which consists of two or more component structures that are integrated, at both the semantic and the expressive pole, to form a composite structure. It is typical in a construction for one component structure to contain a schematic substructure which the other component serves to elaborate, i.e. characterize in finer-grained detail. A schematic element elaborated by another component is called an elaboration site, or e-site. For instance, juxtapositions of film shots are bounded by relations of semantic correspondences and categorization.

 Put into a larger context the control cycle is considered a pervasive cognitive model that instantiates an embodied mechanism of incorporation and control. The mechanism operates at different levels of cognitive organization: perceptual and motor capture, embodied simulation, narrative conceptual structures that activate narrative interest, sensory-motor interaction with external stimuli, epistemic apprehension, but also in successful brain interaction with the external world. This interaction is based on predictive models that the brain uses to model the external world and is used by the organism in order to create and maintain a state of homeostatic organization opposed to the unorganized, disordered, unstable states based on the dissipation and entropy of the physical world.

Therefore, the emphasis here is on the dynamic aspect of the control cycle - which can be conceived as a computer algorithm that runs several transient states of phases. This dynamic pattern manifests at multiple levels of organization, in several conceptual domains, and time spans. The control cycle can be envisioned as a rule governing the behavior of the simplest of organisms, i.e., the cell, as well as of complex organisms that aggregate multiple entities in coherent behavioral wholes.

Part of the scope of this study is to bring to attention force-dynamic concepts and the dynamic model of the control cycle as complementary to the image schemas listed in the literature regarding conceptual embodiment.

How did your time at UCSB influence this book project?

First of all, life at the UCSB campus offered me the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of focusing on the task at hand and productively isolated me from day-to-day requests. The quality of life at the university is given by its natural setting, its architectural stage and the positive valence mood of its actors: students and scholars. Equally, UCSB offered me the chance to present my work to an expert audience. Pertinent suggestions indicated me novel directions of inquiry and revealed areas of research in need of refinement. For instance, my work, in the early stages, was grounded more on the discrete aspects of grammar however, after some hints suggested by Professor Kay Young, I turned to the more thorough exploration of the fluid-like facets of sense-making.

What unique contributions to mind studies are scholars of the humanities positioned to make, do you think?

Scholars of the humanities provide applied work outside the laboratory conditions - in natural circumstances and more diverse contexts – that reveal the natural behavior of sense-makers. Laboratory tests either simplify the interpretive act or favor task-linked biases. For instance, several recent studies of emotions elicited during film viewing of actual shots and sequences from movies were more insightful than experiments done in laboratory conditions with sequences elaborated for the study.

Where do you see the field of interdisciplinary studies of the mind heading? What unanswered (or just beginning to be answered) questions are you curious about?

Interdisciplinary studies of the mind begin to answer questions regarding the boundary between the unconscious and conscious cognitive mechanisms. Today we need further investigations on the conditions occurring during conscious and unconscious sense-making. Some key questions concern the deterministic aspects and the modulatory influence of the free will in the domain of aesthetic experiences.

How do you see your interest in the mind intersecting with other fields of study in the humanities (such as environmental scholarship, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity…)?

The control cycle model and the circular coupling of distinct elements is a useful conceptual tool for the investigation of meaningful relationships between humans and environment or between social partners. Relationships of dominance, antagonism, or cooperation between humans can be easily described in terms of the circular coupling and control.

You can reach Mircea at mvdeaca[at]gmail.com