Game of Thrones helps scientists solve 'mysterious brain power'

Our brains have a complex network that is “responsible for one of our most basic abilities: recognizing faces.”

A new study, conducted by the Department of Psychology at the University of York in England, investigated how the brain processes information to better identify faces.

The study relied on the famous TV series Game of Thrones to uncover the secrets of this mysterious puzzle.

“We chose to show participants clips from Game of Thrones, which has captivated people all over the world with its strong and highly nuanced characters,” said Kira Noad, lead author of the study.

Half of the 70 study participants had previously watched the series, while the other half had not.

Psychologists scanned the participants' brains using magnetic resonance imaging while they watched "Game of Thrones."

The scans revealed that when the main characters in the series "Game of Thrones" were shown, the brains of participants who had previously watched the series showed higher activity in areas associated with identifying the features of unseen characters.

These individuals also had better brain connections for both visual and non-visual information about the characters, something that participants unfamiliar with the TV series had previously missed.

The scientists also conducted a detailed study on individuals with prosopagnosia, or "face blindness" (like the previous group, half of whom were familiar with "Game of Thrones" and the other half were not).

Those with prosopagnosia showed no increase in brain activity associated with character recognition, and their brain connections for visual and non-visual information were weaker.

“While it has been thought that we recognize faces by knowing their visual characteristics – such as features, composition and texture – our study suggests that this involves linking the face to knowledge about the person, including their personality traits, body language and our personal experiences,” explained Tim Andrews, lead author of the study. 

The research team concluded that "prosopagnosia" appears to be associated with reduced neural connectivity, which hinders the ability to link facial features to a person's existing knowledge, an important part of facial recognition.

The team aims to conduct additional studies to delve deeper into the neural mechanisms underlying facial recognition, and identify factors that could impair this ability.

The study was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.