New research reveals how friends and story characters are represented in the brain. Recent research shows that loneliness blurs the distinction between real and fictional characters in the brain, suggesting that lonely people may seek emotional connections with favorite fictional characters as much as they do with real-life friends.
For people who often feel lonely, the distinction between real friends and beloved fictional characters becomes blurred in parts of the brain that are active when thinking about others, research has found.
The study involved brain scans of Game of Thrones fans as they reflected on different characters from the series and their real-life friends. Prior to the study, all participants underwent a loneliness assessment.
The difference between those who scored highest on loneliness and those who scored lowest was stark, said study co-author Dylan Wagner, an associate professor of psychology at Ohio State University.
"In our study, there was a clear boundary between representations of real people and fictional characters in the brains of the least lonely participants," Wagner said. "But for the loneliest participants, the boundary between real people and some fictional people was almost non-existent." The results suggest that lonely people may think about their favorite fictional characters like real friends.
Wagner conducted the research with Timothy Blum. He graduated from Ohio State University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University. His research paper was recently published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
Data for the study was collected during the 2017 broadcast of the seventh season of the HBO series Game of Thrones. The study used brain scans on 19 self-proclaimed fans of the series and asked them to think about themselves, nine friends and nine characters from the series. (Characters included Bronn, Catelyn Stark, Cersei Lannister, Davos Seaworth, Jaime Lannister, Jon Snow, Petyr Baelish, Sandor Clegane and Ygritte.) Participants reported their closest and favorite Game of Thrones characters.
Game of Thrones is an eight-season fantasy series about the political and military conflicts between the ruling families of two fictional continents. This was ideal for the study, Wagner said, because the large cast showcases a variety of characters that people can become attached to.
In the study, participants' brains were scanned in an fMRI machine while they evaluated themselves, their friends, and characters from Game of Thrones. Functional magnetic resonance imaging indirectly measures activity in various parts of the brain through small changes in blood flow.
The researchers were particularly interested in what happens in a part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), where activity increases when people think about themselves and others.
In an fMRI machine, participants were shown a series of names—sometimes themselves, sometimes one of their nine friends, sometimes one of nine characters from Game of Thrones. Each name appears on a characteristic, such as sadness, trustworthiness, or intelligence. Participants simply answered "yes" or "no" to determine whether the characteristic accurately described the person, while the researchers simultaneously measured activity in the MPFC part of their brains.
The researchers compared the results when participants thought about their friends versus when they thought about fictional characters.
"When we analyzed the brain patterns of the MPFC, the representation of real versus fictional characters was very clear in the non-lonely participants," Wagner said. "But in the lonelier people, the boundaries started to break down. You couldn't see a clear line between the two groups." The findings suggest that lonely people may look to fictional characters for a sense of belonging that is lacking in real life, and the results can be seen in the brain. "The neural representations of fictional characters are similar to real-world friends," he said.
But the study found that even the least lonely participants were affected by the characters they cared about most about Game of Thrones.
The results showed that participants' favorite characters from Game of Thrones seemed more like real friends in their brains than other characters from the show. This was true for everyone in the study, no matter how lonely they were or who their favorite character was.
"Lonely or not, your favorite characters feel more real to you," he said.