The Science - methods
The Science - Results
The results shown here are our preliminary analyses from the rehearsal data. More detailed analyses and papers will follow.
Question 1 - How does acting change your sense of self?
Hearing your own name is a compelling and meaningful social signal that attracts your attention. In both infants and adults, hearing your own name engages medial prefrontal cortex. We wanted to know if this effect can be measured with fNIRS in adults, and if it is differs with context. That is, do actors respond to their name when they are acting, in the same way as when they are not acting?
During the rehearsals, we called the actor's names at specific times and analysed the brain responses to these events. We find strong activation of prefrontal cortex when hearing your own name when actor was not acting (left picture). The same pattern (slightly stronger) was present when the actor was acting (right picture). The next analysis will test if this is true for all the actors.
Question 1 - How does acting change your sense of self?
Hearing your own name is a compelling and meaningful social signal that attracts your attention. In both infants and adults, hearing your own name engages medial prefrontal cortex. We wanted to know if this effect can be measured with fNIRS in adults, and if it is differs with context. That is, do actors respond to their name when they are acting, in the same way as when they are not acting?
During the rehearsals, we called the actor's names at specific times and analysed the brain responses to these events. We find strong activation of prefrontal cortex when hearing your own name when actor was not acting (left picture). The same pattern (slightly stronger) was present when the actor was acting (right picture). The next analysis will test if this is true for all the actors.
Question 2 - Are there consistent and repeatable brain activity patterns across different scenes?
How do these compare across actors?
The video below shows the average brain activity of two actors playing Cobweb (shorter figure) and the Bee (taller figure) as Cobweb catches the Bee. The 7 videos shows the actions performed in the 7 repeats of this scene. The two actors perform quite different actions which are tightly coordinated, and their brain activity patterns are remarkably similar.