# Your Brain on Fiction



## Kilgore Trout (Jun 25, 2010)

> AMID the squawks and pings of our digital devices, the old-fashioned virtues of reading novels can seem faded, even futile. But new support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience.
> 
> Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.


Read here.

This article came out a few months ago, but I found it fascinating, and wanted to share.


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## Skum (Jun 27, 2010)

I like how neuroscience is the haven of valuing all things these days. Neuroscience represent.

I'm in a psycholinguistics course and we're currently talking about skilled and unskilled readers. I pretty much exclusively read non-fiction but I've noticed my reading skills are rather poor. I read slowly, deliberately, and have a hard time understanding global meaning (mainly due to problems with concentrating), and I've wondered if this is partly due to choice in reading materials.
This article discusses the sensory and emotional envelopment fiction provides, so I wonder if there is a significant difference between fiction and non-fiction in this department. For example, would constructing global meaning be easier in the context of a story? 
And I wonder if fiction from different eras would make a difference. Would slightly archaic forms of written speech slow down reading speed/processing?

Suppose I could test it out personally, at least.


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## wuliheron (Sep 5, 2011)

It is an interesting subject. What the article doesn't go into is other findings that different parts of the brain that evolved for things like smell or whatever were adapted for language. There's even evidence that people who speak different languages can use more or less of their brains. It's a hot topic among philosophers, computer programmers, etc. as well as neurologists and the empirical evidence is mounting so fast it's believed sometime this century we'll have an establish scientific theory of linguistics. On that day I expect to hear a loud hissing sound as eons of accumulated hot air are slowly ventilated first from academia and then the effect spreads to the general public.

By the way, the idea that we treat words as metaphors is a contextualist one. There is also evidence our senses are cross wired and, for example, sounds can influence tastes.


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## Flatlander (Feb 25, 2012)

wuliheron said:


> It is an interesting subject. What the article doesn't go into is other findings that different parts of the brain that evolved for things like smell or whatever were adapted for language. There's even evidence that people who speak different languages can use more or less of their brains. It's a hot topic among philosophers, computer programmers, etc. as well as neurologists and the empirical evidence is mounting so fast it's believed sometime this century we'll have an establish scientific theory of linguistics. On that day I expect to hear a loud hissing sound as eons of accumulated hot air are slowly ventilated first from academia and then the effect spreads to the general public.


Are there any good books you can point me to on the topic? Or compilations of information?


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## wuliheron (Sep 5, 2011)

Probably said:


> Are there any good books you can point me to on the topic? Or compilations of information?


Progress has been so rapid in neurology in the last few decades it makes even the experts' heads spin. To make matters worse the philosophers and others are taking different approaches from the neurologists and, as far as I know, there simply are no books for the lay public that really cover what is happening in the field. It's a bit like quantum mechanics where the arguments are hot and heavy, the experimental results keep blowing everyone's mind, and the theories as wild and varied as you can imagine. If you don't understand contextualism, which most people don't, you can't begin to understand half the arguments. I keep hoping somebody will come out with a "Contextualism for Dummies" or "Wittgenstein for Dummies", but it hasn't happened in 60 years. "Wittgenstein's Poker" is about as good as it gets and merely dips it's toe in the water.


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## Flatlander (Feb 25, 2012)

wuliheron said:


> Progress has been so rapid in neurology in the last few decades it makes even the experts' heads spin. To make matters worse the philosophers and others are taking different approaches from the neurologists and, as far as I know, there simply are no books for the lay public that really cover what is happening in the field. It's a bit like quantum mechanics where the arguments are hot and heavy, the experimental results keep blowing everyone's mind, and the theories as wild and varied as you can imagine. If you don't understand contextualism, which most people don't, you can't begin to understand half the arguments. I keep hoping somebody will come out with a "Contextualism for Dummies" or "Wittgenstein for Dummies", but it hasn't happened in 60 years. "Wittgenstein's Poker" is about as good as it gets and merely dips it's toe in the water.


I will try dipping and see what happens. Thank you.


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## Dolorous Haze (Jun 2, 2012)

Explains why I suffer from withdrawal symptoms when I don't read in a couple of days.


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## Obsidean (Mar 24, 2010)

Skum said:


> I like how neuroscience is the haven of valuing all things these days. Neuroscience represent.


Damn neuroscience, stealing all the behaviourism thunder!


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

Yeah, I really needed to read a study to know that being told a story can have an effect on the way you think -- I think all of us have been told things that were profound at various moments in our lives. Logically if you read about something and you then thought about for example the way it would look, smell, or feel that would engage the parts of your brain that handle those sensations.


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## SunFlower27 (Sep 29, 2012)

Fascinating. I wonder what science has to say about the effects of writing fiction?


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## Coldspot (Nov 7, 2011)

Sounds to me like they are now realizing that when you read about something happening, you are simulating it in your mind and therefore giving yourself a frame of reference. Isn't that common sense?


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## whispers_the_wind (Aug 30, 2012)

> ...that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective.














> Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.”


This makes me wonder the different ways in which people actually experience reading. For instance, comparing people who primarily think in images and those that think in words and how they experience reading the same thing. Must research.

Thank you for sharing, OP.


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