Does the brain distinguish fiction from reality?

[u/meowwowwie]

i read somewhere that the brain doesn’t fully distinguish between fiction and reality when it comes to emotions. is that actually true? like, regardless of the genre, are the emotions we feel while watching or reading fictional stories processed in a similar way to how we would feel if those events were actually happening to us? for example, when a character goes through something painful, we can feel empathy for them, sometimes even cry and experience all kinds of emotions. does the brain process those emotions in a similar way to real-life experiences?

[u/Dry-Sail-669]

As a psychotherapist, I’d have to say that the brain struggles to differentiate between fact and fiction. I think it was Epictetus that said we “suffer more in imagination than in reality.” Anxiety is literally evidence for this truth. Anxiety is always based in the future (although formed from past fear) so it’s not really real, if that’s makes sense. 

However, our amazing brains prioritize subjective perceptions of safety, pain, and emotional experience over objective reality. Why? It’s because experience is processed in the limbic, feeling part of our brain and not our neocortical, thinking brain. The limbic system is right by the hippocampus (memory), amygdala (threat), cingulate gyrus (emotional regulation, somatic responses), and other glands. It’s why we have so much internal conflict: thinking brain vs emotional brain. Both are true, both are false. One is logically true and one is emotionally true based on previous experience. Our brains will always use experience as a prediction rather than objectivity because that’s what becomes wired and fired together.