Football fans’ brain activity goes to “extremes” while watching a match, reveals new research. The findings may explain why otherwise rational people suddenly “flip” at matches, say scientists. Researchers in Chile found that certain circuit regions of the brain were activated in fans while watching their team play, triggering extreme positive and negative emotions and behaviour. They say these patterns could apply to other types of fanaticism as well, and that the circuits are forged early in life. The research team explained that football provides a useful model for studying social identity and emotional processing in competitive situations as fans exhibit a broad spectrum of behaviours, from spectatorship to intense emotional engagement. Rivalries run deep, and fans can be very protective of their “home” team and favourite players. Fans experience a whole range of emotions while watching their team succeed or fail over the course of a match, cheering when they score or raging at a bad decision. Lead author, Professor Francisco Zamorano said: “Soccer fandom provides a high-ecological-validity model of fanaticism with quantifiable life consequences for health and collective behaviour. “While social affiliation has been widely studied, the neurobiological mechanisms of social identity in competitive settings are unclear, so we set out to investigate the brain mechanisms associated with emotional responses in soccer fans to their teams’ victories and losses.” For the study, published in the journal Radiology, researchers used functional MRI (fMRI) – a technique that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow – to examine 60 healthy male football fans, aged 20 to 45, of two historic rivals. A whole-brain analysis was conducted to compare neural responses when participants viewed their favourite team scoring against an arch rival – classed as a “significant victory” – compared to when the arch rival scored against their team – classed as a “significant defeat” – with control conditions for non-rival goals. The fMRI results showed that brain activity changed when the fan’s team succeeded or failed. Prof Zamorano, of Universidad San Sebastian, Santiago, said: “Rivalry rapidly reconfigures the brain’s valuation-control balance within seconds. “With significant victory, the reward circuitry in the brain is amplified relative to non-rival wins, whereas in significant defeat the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) – which plays an important role in cognitive control – shows paradoxical suppression of control signals.” He explained that paradoxical suppression refers to the attempt to suppress a thought, feeling or behaviour and it results in the opposite outcome.

Original source: gb