Brain System for Social Categorization by Narrative Roles

The cognitive system applies categorical thinking to facilitate perception of the rich environment around us. In person cogni-tion, research has focused on the roles of gender, race, age, or appearance in social categorical thinking. Here we investigated how narrative roles, as portrayed by different cinematic characters, are categorized in the neurocognitive system. Under func-tional MRI, 17 human participants (7 females) were asked to make different judgments regarding personality traits of 16 re-nowned cinematic characters representing four roles: hero, sidekick, mentor, and villain. Classification analysis showed a brain network, comprising the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, the precuneus and the temporoparietal junction bilaterally, and the left occipital face area (OFA), to discriminate among the four roles. No such classification was found between other individual attributes including age or the associated film. Moreover, regions overlapping the default mode network (DMN) were found to better discriminate between roles, rather than the individual characters, while the OFA was found to better discriminate between individuals. These results demonstrate the inherent role of roles in person cognition, and suggest an intimate relation between roles categorization and self-referential activity.

Automated summary

This study investigated the categorization of narrative roles portrayed by cinematic characters in the neurocognitive system. The results showed that specific brain regions can discriminate between different roles, while attributes unrelated to the roles, such as age, cannot be differentiated. This suggests the importance of roles in person cognition and their intimate relationship with self-referential activity.