In lonely people, the boundary between real friends and favorite fictional characters gets blurred in the part of the brain that is active when thinking about others, a new study found.
Researchers scanned the brains of people who were fans of"Game of Thrones" while they thought about various characters in the show and about their real friends. All participants had taken a test measuring loneliness.
"But the boundaries between real and some fictional people were nearly nonexistent for the loneliest participant." For the study, the participants' brains were scanned in an fMRI machine while they evaluated themselves, friends and"Game of Thrones" characters. An fMRI indirectly measures activity in various parts of the brain through small changes in blood flow.
The researchers compared results from when participants were thinking about their friends to when they were thinking about the fictional characters. The findings suggest that lonely people may turn to fictional characters for a sense of belonging that is lacking in their real life, and that the results can be seen in brain, Wagner said.
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