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Tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans

The tribal character of the affective link between football fans and their teams is a well-recognized phenomenon. Other forms of love such as romantic or maternal attachment have previously been studied from a neuroimaging point of view. Here we aimed to investigate the neural basis of this tribal f...

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Autores principales: Duarte, Isabel C., Afonso, Sónia, Jorge, Helena, Cayolla, Ricardo, Ferreira, Carlos, Castelo-Branco, Miguel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5460049/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28338882
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx003
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author Duarte, Isabel C.
Afonso, Sónia
Jorge, Helena
Cayolla, Ricardo
Ferreira, Carlos
Castelo-Branco, Miguel
author_facet Duarte, Isabel C.
Afonso, Sónia
Jorge, Helena
Cayolla, Ricardo
Ferreira, Carlos
Castelo-Branco, Miguel
author_sort Duarte, Isabel C.
collection PubMed
description The tribal character of the affective link between football fans and their teams is a well-recognized phenomenon. Other forms of love such as romantic or maternal attachment have previously been studied from a neuroimaging point of view. Here we aimed to investigate the neural basis of this tribal form of love, which implies both the feeling of belongingness and rivalry against opposing teams. A pool of 56 participants was submitted to an fMRI experimental design involving the presentation of winning and losing football moments of their loved, rival or neutral teams. We found recruitment of amygdala and reward regions, including the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra (SN), as well as other limbic regions involved in emotional cognition, for ‘positive vs neutral’ and ‘positive vs negative’ conditions. The latter contrast was correlated with neuropsychological scores of fanaticism in the amygdala and regions within the reward system, as the VTA and SN. The observation of increased response patterns in critical components of the reward system, in particular for positive content related to the loved team, suggests that this kind of non-romantic love reflects a specific arousal and motivational state, which is biased for emotional learning of positive outcomes.
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spelling pubmed-54600492017-06-09 Tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans Duarte, Isabel C. Afonso, Sónia Jorge, Helena Cayolla, Ricardo Ferreira, Carlos Castelo-Branco, Miguel Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci Original Articles The tribal character of the affective link between football fans and their teams is a well-recognized phenomenon. Other forms of love such as romantic or maternal attachment have previously been studied from a neuroimaging point of view. Here we aimed to investigate the neural basis of this tribal form of love, which implies both the feeling of belongingness and rivalry against opposing teams. A pool of 56 participants was submitted to an fMRI experimental design involving the presentation of winning and losing football moments of their loved, rival or neutral teams. We found recruitment of amygdala and reward regions, including the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra (SN), as well as other limbic regions involved in emotional cognition, for ‘positive vs neutral’ and ‘positive vs negative’ conditions. The latter contrast was correlated with neuropsychological scores of fanaticism in the amygdala and regions within the reward system, as the VTA and SN. The observation of increased response patterns in critical components of the reward system, in particular for positive content related to the loved team, suggests that this kind of non-romantic love reflects a specific arousal and motivational state, which is biased for emotional learning of positive outcomes. Oxford University Press 2017-05 2017-02-23 /pmc/articles/PMC5460049/ /pubmed/28338882 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx003 Text en © The Author(s) (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Original Articles
Duarte, Isabel C.
Afonso, Sónia
Jorge, Helena
Cayolla, Ricardo
Ferreira, Carlos
Castelo-Branco, Miguel
Tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans
title Tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans
title_full Tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans
title_fullStr Tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans
title_full_unstemmed Tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans
title_short Tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans
title_sort tribal love: the neural correlates of passionate engagement in football fans
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5460049/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28338882
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx003
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