Your brain on hockey: Waterloo study aims to catch the ‘real -time experience’ of the audience
Jacob Howard loves watching the game, but hockey is what he gets the most excited.
“This is a fast book,” he said at Uptown Waterloo while watching the outdoor of the Stanley Cup final, where Edmonton Oilly is carrying Florida panthers.
“It is physical, it is exciting. There are plays that like me, ‘Ooh’ or my face cover. It’s something that I can really be emotional, which I can’t really feel about things like football or baseball.”
He says that watching a game with others like a watch party in Waterloo Town Square on 10 June, actually adds the pleasure of the game.
Howard said, “I watch the game with a herd of people in my living room than people alone.”
Ethan Loginov, who plays hockey himself, says that the Stanley Cup is something special about watching the final game.
“I am just looking at the best in the world, which they are best, seeing why they are the best, looking at things you know as a hockey player you can never do and are able to see that every day is amazing,” Loginov said.
Look Hundreds of people attend the Stanley Cup Watch Party in Uptown Waterloo,
Uptown Waterloo hosted an outdoor watch party on Monday for game 3 of the Stanley Cup final. Hundreds of hockey fans showed Edmonton Olers to take them to Florida panthers-and were disappointed with a 6–1 defeat. Wateloo’s Mayor Dorothy McKebe, Uptown Waterloo BIA Executive Director Jayas Balashanth and some hockey fans spoke to John Delsong of CBC KW at the event.
As two hockey fans saw the game, new research from Waterloo University suggests that their brain may have processed the game in a different way compared to those who recently jumped on the Bandwagon.
Luke Potwark, a prominent researcher in the Department of Entertainment and Holiday Studies of the University, and a new study co-author Luke Potwark says that he asked people to look at hockey as part of the proof-of-concept study to test a non-invasive brain imaging device, called the infrared spectroscopy near the infrared spectroscopy.
“Sometimes it is really difficult for the audience to accurately describe their experiences or how they were playing what they were watching.
First, he asked the students about his hockey fandam, then he put them in two groups: low and high participation with hockey.
He then asked 20 students to go to the laboratory, where they watched 20 minutes of the 2018 European Hockey League game between Cardiff Devils and Nottingham Panthers, and they were asked to choose a team to watch because they were watching.
“We coded it and gave it time for all major scoring opportunities and faceoff opportunities and we took brain imaging slices and analyzed it before 10 seconds after each scoring chance and aggressive faceoffs,” Potwark said.
Adrian, a PhD candidate in the school’s psychology department, who contributed to the study, said that he found that one part of the brain had greater activity that was called the average average prefrontal cortex during moments like faceofoffs.
“We found that his average prefrontal cortex was more active among emotional fans. It is part of the brain that is responsible for evaluating and justice of social situations,” Safati said.
Safati said that he chose a game that was not particularly high stakes, as he wanted to control for subjective feelings. This would count a Stanley Cup game, such as the Panthers with Tuesday’s Game 6 ahead the best series.
For example, fans may have reacted differently, if it was Thorold, ONTS center Joy Martin, Oilors Superstar Connor McDawid, who played with Cardiff Devils in 2018.
Look Oilors fans monitor a game 7 return,
After losing 5–2 to Florida Panthers 5–2 in game 5 of Stanley Cup final, the Edmonton is going back to the state of Sunshine in the hope of tieing the series and forcing the seventh and decision-making game. CBC’s Sam Brokes spoke with the fans of Olers after the game, who did not lose hope in his team.
Other sports, social impact
Potwark says this is the first time, for their knowledge, that a functional near Infrared Spectroscopy has been used to study a fan response to the game, but there are other opportunities where it can be used, including health prevention and other social science experiments.
He further says, he wants to see how the brain reacts to other sports.
“We want to see how brain works in football? How does it act when it processes a basketball game or also curling for that case? I don’t know. But we really want to try it,” he said.
It can also be a chance to see how the comment during those games affects the experience of a person of the game and it can help the broadcasters better understand what works for fans and casual audiences and what is not connected to them.
“I think another important exciting field of research for us is to think about how brain activation may be different in social viewing conditions such as with groups of people such as it was just the experience of individual audiences in our study to see parties. So a lot of potential to move forward is moving forward,” Potwark said.
Safati said that he is interested in the social aspect, whether there is an infectious effect, where a person is really investing what they are seeing, which can transfer friends or other people to see the game.
“Maybe you can also use it to see it on a baseball game whether it is really boring as much as people say,” he said.
The title of the study is Understanding a sport viewership experience using functional close-ended spectroscopy And was published in the journal in April Scientific report,
