Avatars

13/11/2009 by admin.

E. Callaway has an article in the New Scientist on how people relate to their avatars or virtual selves compared to their real selves (here). Again, it seems that our sense of self is not exactly what we would expect.

Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one. … Previously, researchers have observed that people easily adopt the persona of their virtual selves, for instance, by acting more aggressively when their avatars are tall than when they are short, irrespective of an individual’s height in the real world. … When K. Caudle looked for brain areas that were more active when volunteers thought about themselves and their avatars compared with real and virtual others, two regions stood out: the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. That makes sense as prior research has linked the medial prefrontal cortex to self-reflection and judgement. … They found activity differed in a region called the precuneus, implicated in imagination.

The precuneus is also interesting. It is tucked inside the central fold in the cortex alone the medial wall and therefore has not shown on EEG waves or many lesion studies and has been somewhat overlooked. It appears to be involved in a variety of high level cognitive functions, including episodic memory, self-related processing and aspects of consciousness. It is part of the default mode network and so may be important in daydreaming as well as real world activities.

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