Actors show different brain activity when in character, study finds

[Judi Lynn]

Method actors were trained to take on role of Romeo or Juliet and then respond to questions

Nicola Davis
@NicolaKSDavis
Tue 12 Mar 2019 20.01 EDT

“Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts,” Marlon Brando once said. But for scientists, working out what is going on in an actor’s head has always been something of a puzzle.

Now, researchers have said thespians show different patterns of brain activity depending on whether they are in character or not.

Dr Steven Brown, the first author of the research from McMaster University in Canada, said: “It looks like when you are acting, you are suppressing yourself; almost like the character is possessing you.”

Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Brown and colleagues report how 15 method actors, mainly theatre students, were trained to take on a Shakespeare role – either Romeo or Juliet – in a theatre workshop, and were asked various questions, to which they responded in character. They were then invited into the laboratory, where their brains were scanned in a series of experiments.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/13/actors-show-different-brain-activity-when-in-character-study-finds