What is 'Real'? How Our Brain Differentiates Between Reality and Fantasy

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What is 'Real'? How Our Brain Differentiates Between Reality and Fantasy

What criteria does the brain use for distinguishing between real people such as George W. Bush and fictional characters such as Cinderella? Recent research suggests that personal relevance may be a key factor, although there are exceptions.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Most people can easily tell the difference between reality and fantasy. We know that characters in novels and movies are fictitious, and we also understand that historical figures - even if we’ve never met them personally - were real people. As obvious as this distinction may seem, however, scientists know very little about the specific brain mechanisms that are responsible for our ability to distinguish between real and fictional events.

Recently, research has identified two areas of the brain that are more strongly activated when people see real characters than when they see fictional characters . These brain regions - in the anterior medial prefrontal and posterior cingulated cortices (amPFC and PCC) - are known to be involved during autobiographical memory retrieval and self-referential thinking. Based on this finding, scientists have hypothesized that our brains may distinguish between reality and fantasy because real things tend to have a higher degree of personal relevance than fictional things do.

A new study tests this hypothesis that personal relevance is the critical factor in differentiating between reality and fantasy by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the brain’s response when processing real and fictional characters. Anna Abraham of the Max Planck Institute for Human Brain and Cognitive Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and the University of Giessen in Giessen, Germany, and D. Yves von Cramon of the Max Planck Institute for Human Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Neurological Research in Cologne, Germany, have published their results ...

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