One of my favorite things to do during a long break is read a good book. Recently I read the novel, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (if you have also read it we can cry together) in one day. The best part about reading is getting lost in the world created by the author. With a good book you can see the world of the novel in front of you and feel the emotions that your favorite characters felt. Scientists have looked into the brain activity behind reading, and what they found is quite interesting.
According to the article Your Brain on Fiction in The New York Times, your brain reacts to what you read on the page by processing that information as if you were doing it. A study by NeuroImage found that when reading words associated with smell such as “cinnamon” and “lavender” people’s primary olfactory cortex lit up. The olfactory cortex is the part of the brain that receives sensory inputs. However, when words like “chair” and “key” the olfactory cortex didn’t respond.
Your brain also responds to metaphors! When reading a phrase such as, “velvety voice” or “leathery hands” the sensory cortex responded. However when the phrase, “the singer had a pleasing voice” were used, the cortex didn’t respond. A study by V�ronique Boulenger found that the motor cortex showed activity when someone reads phrases like, “Pablo kicked the ball” or “John grasped the object”.
There is little differentiation between reading the action/sensation and experiencing it to the brain. Keith Oatley has said that reading creates a vivid reality that, “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Which is one the best parts of reading if you ask me. You enter a world different than the one you are living in.
Dr. Raymond Mar found that there is an overlap in your brain functions used to socially interact with people and understand stories. Reading fiction has been linked to many different social theories such as the “theory of mind”. The theory of mind is how your brain connects reading to trying to figure out the feelings and thoughts of other people. My thought on the theory of mind is when you are reading, you see the characters’ innermost thoughts and feelings right on the page. With being able to see your favorite characters emotions and thoughts in front of you, you wish this were the case in real life.
Books aren’t the only place where theory of mind is prevalent. Another mode of theory of mind is with movies. Usually movies are seen with friends or family, especially with young children. However, it is not prevalent in watching television. Dr. Mar believes that the theory doesn’t work with television because television is mostly watched alone (especially if you’re like me and watch Netlfix on the computer).
According to Dr. Oatley fiction “”is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.” which I couldn’t agree with more.
So next time you find yourself lost within the pages of a novel, holding back tears, or even laughing out loud, you can thank your brain’s cortexes for feeling the true impact of a great novel.
I found this very interesting, as I used to be quite the bookworm (then I came to college and, let’s be real, ain’t nobody got time for that…). I found that even as I was reading this blog, the words you mentioned, such as “leathery” sounded more appealing than the rest of it. I found it interesting that this was something I could pick up on without the data that you talked about, and also without even realizing it until I read this post. I definitely think that words can cause connections in the brain, and I’ve noticed that random words often will remind me of one specific moment in my life, and I think that that would also cause a reaction in the brain of the same type. I believe that there are triggers in your brain and that words set off so many of them. I would be interested to see what specific smells have the same sorts of impact on the brain.