Good news for sports fans — MRI exams show how watching sports improves well-being
Sports fanatics may now have scientific backing to justify some of their spirited antics, as new neuroimaging evidence suggests that watching your favorite team compete might actually be good for your overall well-being.
Metrics of mental well-being are largely subjective. However, an extensive new trio of studies out of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan has brought objective measurements to light supporting the notion that watching competitive sports, regardless of whether someone considers themself to be a fan, could improve connections in parts of the brain’s reward center.
“A significant challenge in well-being research is the subjective nature of measurement procedures, potentially leading to biased findings,” Associate Professor Shintaro Sato from the Faculty of Sport Sciences at the university, and colleagues noted in a release on their work. “Therefore, our studies focused on both subjective and objective measures of well-being.”
In addition to incorporating two large subjective analyses, experts tapped into the utility of MRI to measure changes in neural activity while individuals watched sports. In doing so, researchers discovered that watching different sports clips elicited an uptick in activity in regions of the brain associated with feelings of happiness and pleasure.
Further, structural imaging also revealed increased gray matter volume in those same brain regions in participants who watch their favorite sports more frequently. This could suggest that persistent sports watching over an extended period of time could gradually change the structure of some of the brain’s reward centers, the authors noted.
Results from the subjective studies that compared self-reported metrics of well-being to sports watching were in line with the neuroimaging findings, especially when participants frequently viewed sports considered more popular, like baseball and soccer.
“Both subjective and objective measures of well-being were found to be positively influenced by engaging in sports viewing,” Professor Sato and colleagues explained. “By inducing structural changes in the brain's reward system over time, it fosters long-term benefits for individuals.”
The neuroimaging aspect of the research was limited by its small size, and the findings would need to be further corroborated in larger groups, the authors acknowledged. However, experts involved in the research pose that their findings could have implications for public health initiatives in the future.
This study is published in Sports Management Review.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.