As players who stay up all night fighting imaginary warriors demonstrate, slipping into the skin of an avatar, and inhabiting a virtual world can be riveting stuff. But to what extent does your brain regard your virtual self as you? Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one.
