Mental Hoop Diaries: Emotional Memories of a College Basketball Game in Rival Fans

Abstract

The rivalry between the men’s basketball teams of Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) is one of the most storied traditions in college sports. A subculture of students at each university form social bonds with fellow fans, develop expertise in college basketball rules, team statistics, and individual players, and self-identify as a member of a fan group. The present study capitalized on the high personal investment of these fans and the strong affective tenor of a Duke-UNC basketball game to examine the neural correlates of emotional memory retrieval for a complex sporting event. Male fans watched a competitive, archived game in a social setting. During a subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging session, participants viewed video clips depicting individual plays of the game that ended with the ball being released towards the basket. For each play, participants recalled whether or not the shot went into the basket. Hemodynamic signal changes time-locked to correct memory decisions were analyzed as a function of emotional intensity and valence, according to the fan’s perspective. Results showed intensity-modulated retrieval activity in midline cortical structures, sensorimotor cortex, the striatum, and the medial temporal lobe, including the amygdala. Positively-valent memories specifically recruited processing in dorsal frontoparietal regions, and additional activity in the insula and medial temporal lobe for positively-valent shots recalled with high confidence. This novel paradigm reveals how brain regions implicated in emotion, memory retrieval, visuomotor imagery, and social cognition contribute to the recollection of specific plays in the mind of a sports fan.

Memory, autonoetic consciousness, and the self

“…Botzung, Rubin, Miles, Cabeza, and LaBar (2010) also found a right-hemispheric amygdalar activation during the retrieval of highly emotional memories. In patients with dissociative amnesia -a condition that is accompanied by a failure of integration of emotive with memory processing functions -we found evidence for right hemispheric dysfunction, such as a hypometabolism of the right inferior lateral prefrontal cortex (Brand et al, 2009).…”

Distinct and common cerebral activation changes during mental time travel in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients

“…Increased activations in healthy controls were also observed in the somatosensory regions during the elaboration phase (vs. the construction phase), not evident in the patient group. In the AM literature, the somatosensory cortex is closely linked to the retrieval of somatosensory representations related to the event, the emotional intensity, and is also especially engaged during the elaboration of events (Daselaar et al 2008;Botzung et al 2010). …”

Neural Correlates of Emotional Memories: A Review of Evidence From Brain Imaging Studies

“…Recent neuroimaging evidence also suggests that AMY plays a role in the successful retrieval of personally relevant events following shorter retention intervals. By investigating basketball fans' memories for specific basketball games, encoded a few days before the scanning session, Botzung, Rubin, Miles, Cabeza, and Labar (2010) showed that AMY activity was modulated by the emotional intensity of the recollected events, and was greater for extremely high-vs. low-intensity events . Hence, this study also points to the involvement of AMY in the retrieval of emotional, personally relevant, events (see also Muscatell, Addis, & Kensinger, 2010;Sharot, Martorella, Delgado, & Phelps, 2007).…”