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 toward 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.

Figure 1.

Example of an experimental trial. The participants viewed a 12 s video clip that ended just before a shot was released toward the basket (retrieval cue). They had 6 s to recall whether the shot went into the basket (“Yes”/“No”). The recall decision was followed by memory confidence and emotion ratings.

Figure 2.

Memory activity parametrically modulated by increasing emotional intensity in cortical midline structures (A) and in the medial temporal lobe (B). The black arrow indicates when, on average, the memory decision was made. The time course plots indicate peak values within each region. amPFC, Anteromedial PFC.

Figure 3.

Regions showing increased activity for positive relative to negative event memories (A) and an interaction between valence and memory confidence (B). Positively valent memories specifically elicited activity in the sensorimotor cortex and left lateral PFC (A). The difference between positive and negative memories was magnified in additional regions, including the insula and hippocampus, when memory confidence was high (B).