It was that time of year, and we saw it again.
In early spring, at the brink of the NCAA basketball season, a massive collective of students, faculty and alumni put their green and white on in order to support the members of our favorite basketball team — The Michigan State Spartans.
This basketball team of ours has garnered quite a lot of love and excitement over the past decade or so.
As a result, this excitement has lead a handful of fans to celebrate the accomplishments of this team as a collaborative group outside in the streets.
From couch burning to flying bagels, some students at MSU take pride in such post-win festivities. Although such activities are frowned upon by a large amount of our same fanbase, that doesn’t appear to deter the behavior of those wishing to display this level of enthusiasm.
Rioting, albeit in this case “recreational rioting,” is quite an interesting phenomenon when looking at the neuropsychological factors that contribute to it.
Your colleagues here at the Neuroscience Club Outreach Committee, we are trying to answer such complex questions in order to provide a new perspective into this cherished and controversial form of Spartan celebration.
Sports celebrations are developed by an igniting event, such as a win to make it to the Final Four. When a group of people assemble to unite over a common victory, this triggers a recently described phenomenon called interpersonal neural synchronization within the bunch.
The temporal-parietal junction, a part of the brain located just behind your ears, is an area important for “social mentalizing” tasks. It has been found that in assembled groups, the activity in this area becomes synchronized with the other members of this group.
This implies that we are actually able to synchronize our brain activity with that of the rest of the crowd through these unique and spontaneous opportunities.
This makes sense though, right?
As you may know, in any collaborative group of people, whether it be for a group project, company meeting, party or the like, something is trying to be accomplished. The success of this accomplishment can depend on how many of us are actively involved and participating.
Yet, one factor is missing: who is guiding the current state of this synergistic neural activity? During the event of interpersonal neural synchronization, leaders are able to spontaneously initiate various forms of cooperative activities that the group can agree with.
In the context of Spartan rioting, this includes chanting, couch burning and bagel projection.
What separates a leader from the rest? It’s too early to give a complete answer, but so far we neuroscientists understand that leaders come about not necessarily because they say a lot of things, but rather because what they say has meaning that is temporally and contextually relevant.
To simplify this, timing and accuracy of one’s contributions to the group are two critical factors underlying leadership emergence.
So what biological factors contribute to getting so amped up during and after a sporting event? A plethora of different mechanisms could be the reason. However, lets focus our attention on hormones and sports.
Studies have found that while watching a sports game, testosterone and cortisol levels rise along with the progression of the game.
Cortisol, known to underlie stress, rises a lot more significantly in both younger and passionate fans — hey that’s us!
Yet another interesting area of the brain that deserves attention here is a complex network of brain cells and structures that are located in the midbrain. As a whole, this network is called the limbic system.
The limbic system serves many different functions, including emotional control, adrenaline flow, motivation, behavior and memory. Within the limbic system lies the amygdala, which is essential for regulating negative emotions and specifically the fear response. Cortisol is known to suppress the amygdala.
This suppression could lead to lack of fear of legal repercussions, especially during these festive activities. In addition, increased testosterone leads to increased aggression levels. This combination results in a more careless celebration.
Hopefully this article has shed light on a few of the many underlying neuropsychological mechanisms behind the repeated celebrations here at MSU. This should give you something to think about the next time there is a collaborative activity following big wins in this year’s NCAA tournament, or after a hopeful big win in the Stanley Cup Playoffs (go Wings!).
Conor Peleman is a neuroscience senior and head of the MSU Neuroscience Club Outreach Committee.
