Courtesy of iStock.com. Gripping their seats during a sports match, passionate fans raucously cheer. This not only registers in the ears of those in the arena or living room but also creates a unique signature in the individual’s brain. Research from the University of Waterloo, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), found that sports fans show different brain activity from those who don’t usually watch games. The researchers studied factors such as the ego involvement of their subjects — a psychological term for a person’s degree of self-involvement in a task or object. Those with high ego involvement may show more interest in sports due to the activation of certain brain regions, such as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which processes personal, meaningful information. The researchers examined neural activations within the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex during gameplay as a function of ego involvement. Eleven high-ego individuals and nine low-ego fans were chosen for the study, and the results showed that high-ego individuals tend to be avid sports fans, while low-ego individuals don’t have a strong preference for sports. This explains the difference between a rowdy, immersed fan and an easily distracted person. Participants began by viewing a game segment containing 12 key-play moments while undergoing neuroimaging with fNIRS. During these key moments, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex was more engaged, as indicated by the detection of oxygenated hemoglobin throughout all key moments for high-ego-involved participants. By measuring the brain activity of sports spectators, researchers gained insight into the psychological processes that guide engagement. Ego involvement has been shown to be a major factor in loyalty and repeat purchases. The participants watched British ice hockey games and had no prior knowledge of the team or its players. The researchers studied brain activity during scoring chances and offensive face-offs, divided into early, middle, and late periods. For hockey fans, offensive face-offs may represent strategic breaks that shift attention to something exciting about to happen. Highly involved viewers might see the start of the game as their time to make early assessments of gameplay or double-check who is on their fantasy team. Over time, however, viewer attention can wane. The results obtained from fNIRS showed that certain key sports moments had more impact than others, and that ego involvement predicted stronger neural effects, particularly within evaluative and self-relevance processing nodes of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Passionate fans showed heightened responses during early game moments, while the two types of fans responded similarly to obvious scoring chances, suggesting that even casual viewers can recognize clear goal-scoring opportunities. Nuances could be found, however, in key moments that required a deeper level of hockey knowledge to understand. Future studies are expected to include brain monitoring across various sports, as well as experimental manipulation of cortical nodes to explore temporal precedence and causality. Another potential study could expand the group’s sample size and age range, since most of the participants were young adults. By its nature, fNIRS limits measurements to prefrontal cortex activity, overlooking important responses in other brain regions, so additional technologies may be used in future analyses. But this analysis won’t compare with how avid fans pick games apart. The research was published in Scientific Reports (www.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-96895-7).