Mar 1, 2024 12:25 AM
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/wh...-in-sports
EXCERPTS: . . . Hooligans, ultras or barras bravas — terms used to describe football fan associations in Latin America — often commit violence, property damage and even murder in supposed support of their teams on the field.
[...] “[A sports team] is very important for my identity as a person,” Zamorano says, adding that super fans can experience a vicarious sense of winning and loss as if they were the players on the field. “Football can give you some kind of value that you don’t have.”
[...] To expand the study, Zamorano added 62 participants to his research that is published in F1000Research. The MRI scans revealed that in super fans, some parts of the brain become more active while others become less active. When the teams of super fans scored goals on their arch rivals, the reward sections of fans’ brains were activated.
Conversely, when scored against, the mentalizing network — regions of the brain that help us think of ourselves and others — was sometimes activated in super fans. When this section of the brain is more involved, it usually means that fans will get more introspective — perhaps to cope with the sadness or negative feelings they experience.
But when arch rivals scored against their team, super fans also experienced a deactivation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). This is an area that connects your feelings and emotions with the rest of your brain. This is important because the dACC regulates our ability to not act on our emotions — it disconnects feelings with rationalizing areas in the brain.
Perhaps this is what happens with hooligans, who have “a notorious lack of self-control” when they become violent, Zamorano says. Their dACC may be deactivated, which means they are more prone to this kind of behavior... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . Hooligans, ultras or barras bravas — terms used to describe football fan associations in Latin America — often commit violence, property damage and even murder in supposed support of their teams on the field.
[...] “[A sports team] is very important for my identity as a person,” Zamorano says, adding that super fans can experience a vicarious sense of winning and loss as if they were the players on the field. “Football can give you some kind of value that you don’t have.”
[...] To expand the study, Zamorano added 62 participants to his research that is published in F1000Research. The MRI scans revealed that in super fans, some parts of the brain become more active while others become less active. When the teams of super fans scored goals on their arch rivals, the reward sections of fans’ brains were activated.
Conversely, when scored against, the mentalizing network — regions of the brain that help us think of ourselves and others — was sometimes activated in super fans. When this section of the brain is more involved, it usually means that fans will get more introspective — perhaps to cope with the sadness or negative feelings they experience.
But when arch rivals scored against their team, super fans also experienced a deactivation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). This is an area that connects your feelings and emotions with the rest of your brain. This is important because the dACC regulates our ability to not act on our emotions — it disconnects feelings with rationalizing areas in the brain.
Perhaps this is what happens with hooligans, who have “a notorious lack of self-control” when they become violent, Zamorano says. Their dACC may be deactivated, which means they are more prone to this kind of behavior... (MORE - missing details)