Ever see an actor who’s so swept up in their performance that they seem to embody their character? Ever had that experience yourself while performing? It turns out there’s a neurological basis for it: A new study has found that actors’ brains literally suppress their sense of self while in character.
An upcoming issue of Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience includes a paper by researchers at University College London, who performed a study with actors at the Flute Theatre. The researchers fitted the actors with headsets that measure activity in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logic and abstract reasoning. While the actors performed scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the researchers called out each actor’s real name and measured their corresponding brain activity.
