‘Your Brain on Cubs’

Narcotics do that, too. Are fans of winning teams in danger of addiction? If so, are Cub fans fortunate? No.

Kelli Whitlock Burton, a science writer, and Hillary R. Rodman, an associate professor of psychology at Emory University, cite studies of activities in the portion of the brain that registers depression, sadness, grief and euphoria, three of which are pertinent to Cub fans. Burton and Rodman note that drug addiction can cause changes in neural sensitivity and structure, and they wonder whether a Cub fan "has subtle and long-lasting changes in his or her brain reward circuitry, comparable to a kind of addiction." They say "a limbic structure called the amygdala, deep within the temporal lobe, shows abnormally high activity in depressed patients." Studies of "induced sadness"—e.g., the brain activity of a person grieving about the end of a romantic relationship—might tell us something about a brain on Cubs. Furthermore, rats that are made to experience "acute and persistent defeat" undergo long-lasting changes in the ability of certain nerve cells to respond electrically to stimuli.

Burton and Rodman report that scientists are identifying "the chemical bases of long-lasting brain changes after social defeat, with the neurotransmitter serotonin—also heavily implicated in clinical depression—among the substances most clearly involved." In fans, as in players, a team's success or failure can cause hormonal changes, particularly in the production of testosterone. Does that mean Cub fans, in a kind of Darwinian "natural deselection," have trouble reproducing?

Writers Tom Valeo and Lindsay Beyerstein report that cognitive neuroscience has produced evidence that the brain strains to produce explanations for things "and it will make up stories to cope with phenomena it cannot otherwise account for." Hence we are hard-wired for religion, and for baseball's many superstitions, such as that of Julio Gotay, a journeyman for the Cardinals and others in the 1960s, who played with a talismanic cheese sandwich in his back pocket. Superstitions give people a sense of control amid uncertainties.

The brain "wants" to see outcomes as connected to preceding events, so fans get the brain-driven pleasure of thinking that their rooting, which is prayer in a secular setting, somehow helps cause their teams' successes. Well. It is said there are no atheists in foxholes. There should be lots of them in Wrigley Field as the Cubs finish the 10th decade of their rebuilding effort.

© 2008