Disclaimer! Before you read, I am in a strange mood tonight so the words will flow like ... I will refrain from making a disturbing metaphor. Anyway, after looking for months for a book, article, forum site, or anything about what happens to our brains when we read, I ran into this pertinent New York Times piece on accident. Surfing through reddit like I do many times a day (hey! don't judge me, the site is addictive), "Your Brain on Fiction" seemed to be a gift from the gods, or at the least from the author, Annie Murphy Paul. She is my great Madonna whom I shall worship before I go to sleep at night. The sub-heading of the article alone, "The Neuroscience of your brain on fiction", was exactly what I was looking for, and I clicked the link eagerly. I was ready to throw myself at the article like a ravenous animal wanting to sink his canines into fresh meat.
Then I decided to bookmark it for later because I was tired.
That's how I roll. Really, that's how I roll. Too much going on. My eyes were drooping, salty tears forming in the wrinkles. I was leaning over my laptop, drooling like a baby. It was wrong. Anyway, finally being ready for the happy times which were sure to ensue when I started reading it, I started reading it. Tonight, March 20th, the first day of Spring. So there you are, and here I am, about to read this and write this, respectively. Get ready, things are about to get real.
According to the authress, Annie Paul, "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." Is this revelation surprising to anyone who has decided to become an English major or even enjoyed a good book or movie at some point in their lives? I have discussed this many times in my blog over the semester: reading stories frees us from the tyranny of the analytical left brain, letting us communicate with the gods and demons which existed so long ago. We can truly believe in ogres, witches, heroes, and princesses within the frame of the story without being called a lunatic. Paul goes deeper in her article, relating that not only are the "classical" language areas of the brain activated while reading words (Broca's area and Wernicke's area), but other sections as well. When we see words like "blue" or "dog", the same parts which are used when we experience them in the physical world are also utilized. In a textbook, analysis, or review we are using the left brain's power of understanding abstract concept; however, in a narrative we are not limited in this way. We really experience with all five senses the worlds which a great author can produce.
A study performed by Spanish researchers in 2006 came to a similar conclusion. When the experimenters asked their subjects "to read words with strong odor associations" and other, more neutral words, they discovered that the part of the brain associated with olfactory functions "lit up" when the smelly words were read but not when the neutral ones were. Metaphors when read or heard, according to Paul's article, had similar reactions in the brain when another experiment was done at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. A metaphor will cause the brain to create the object in the mind. "A monkey on your back." "The elephant in the room." The power of imagination is forming images in your head as you read these, whether you like it or not.
"The brain" according to Paul, "... 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. 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 computers simulations run on computers.'" In the same way that hypnotists override the program of personality, so can books. During my trip to Portland over spring break (which I will discuss in more detail in my next blog), I went to Powell's book store, apparently the biggest such store in America. There, in the rare book section, I discovered the author Ormond McGill (what a cool first name). His book was selling for $70, and I didn't have long to look at it, but he discusses hypnosis and magic. Reading, in its own little way, is magical. It is the power to create worlds and to enter another's thoughts and feelings. Walter Ong mentions a man in Orality and Literacy who literally believed that the written word was magic. And it is; we just forgot it is. Each texture, hue, smell, or image we create while reading becomes alive inside us as our perfect representation of what that thing is. In this way, the world inside us is far more perfect than the world outside.
The act of engaging in a story also activates the part of our brain dealing with social interaction and empathy. Paul cites two researchers, Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, who wrote that "individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, emphasize with them and see the world from their perspective." By being an English major, you are becoming a way cooler person to talk to, and damn if you aren't able to understand people a little better too. How could you not if you were Skull Crusher of Morlack on Monday, the pretty belle of Alabama, Suzanna Bonnet, on Tuesday, and the Baroness of Castle Love on Wednesday? Not that you read those kind of books. Paul ends her article with a nice two sentences: "Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is true than we imagined." So, essentially, reading books is like exercising our social skills without being social with physical people. I can get behind that. I see how experiencing life through many different characters can widen your scope of humanity. Some communist, realist theorists really got behind this idea. And damn if I am not a communist in this case. Maybe. At any rate, reading lets us live things which we never could in our "normal" daily lives. It can give birth to anything you or anybody else has ever dreamed. Yes, it is magical. Amen, fellow English majors (or not, depending on who is reading this).
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