This Is Your Brain On Fiction . . .

“The novel, of course, is an unequaled medium for the exploration of human social and emotional life. And there is evidence that just as the brain responds to depictions of smells and textures and movements as if they were the real thing, so it treats the interactions among fictional characters as something like real-life social encounters.”

That sentence is from an article in The New York Times called Your Brain On Fiction.

There’s a parallel article on Buffer called What listening to a story does to our brains.

I’m going to rather indiscriminately give snippets from both articles, though I suppose, since I’m choosing which ones to share, it’s somewhat discriminate :-)

“For over 27,000 years, since the first cave paintings were discovered, telling stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods.”

“Researchers have long known that the ‘classical’ language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are involved in how the brain interprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive. Words like ‘lavender’, ‘cinnamon’ and ‘soap’, for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells.”

“We are wired that way. A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. And that is exactly how we think.

“We think in narratives all day long, no matter if it is about buying groceries, whether we think about work or our spouse at home. We make up (short) stories in our heads for every action and conversation.”

“The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.”

“Storytelling is one of the most powerful techniques we have as humans to communicate and motivate.”

“Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined.”

And, from the Stanford News Service, an article called Fiction books give a boost to the brain.

Here’s a slightly extended quote from that article:

“Readers of literary works by the likes of Samuel Beckett, Stéphane Mallarmé and Geoffrey Chaucer are getting lots of exercise from these personal trainers for the brain.

“Literary works of fiction can offer ‘a new set of methods for becoming a better maker of arguments, a better redeemer of one’s own existence, a person of stronger faith or a person with a quieter mind’, says Joshua Landy, associate professor of French and Italian.

“New research by Landy illustrates how authors throughout the ages have sought to improve mental skills like rational thinking and abstract thought by leading their readers through a gantlet of mental gymnastics.

“In contrast to the common practice of mining fictional works for moral messages and information, Landy’s theory of fiction, outlined in his new book, ‘How to Do Things with Fictions’, presents a new reason for reading in an age when the patience to tackle challenging pieces of writing has dwindled tremendously.

“Reading fiction ‘does not make us better people in the moral sense, whether by teaching us lessons, making us more empathetic or training us to handle morally complex situations’, said Landy.

“However, for those interested in fine-tuning their intellectual capacities, Landy said literary works of fiction can offer ‘a new set of methods for becoming a better maker of arguments, a better redeemer of one’s own existence, a person of stronger faith or a person with a quieter mind.’”

Three good articles to read in full—three different takes on fiction and the mind…

Hope you enjoy them and hope you come back and share your thoughts and feelings in the Comments :-)
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