Source: Maggie Sokolik, PhD. University of California, Berkeley. College Writing 2.3x.

Principles of Written English. https://www.edx.org/ Free online courses from the best top
universities in the world.

WHY READ FICTION?

Why should you read fiction or poetry? In today's busy world, many people feel that
reading fiction is a waste of time, or that following the news or nonfiction are more
valuable pursuits.

The following article explains the benefits of reading fiction. If you don't understand some
of the vocabulary, look them up immediately or make a note of the words and look them
after.

YOUR BRAIN ON FICTION

By Annie Murphy Paul

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.

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.

In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked

participants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words, while
their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
machine. When subjects looked at the Spanish words for “perfume” and “coffee,” their
primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words that mean “chair” and “key,” this
region remained dark. The way the brain handles metaphors has also received extensive
study; some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so
familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more. Last month, however, a team of
researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in
their laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for
perceiving texture through touch, became active. Metaphors like “The singer had a velvet
voice” and “He had leathery hands” roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for
meaning, like “The singer had a pleasing voice” and “He had strong hands,” did not.

Researchers have discovered that words describing motion also stimulate regions of the
brain distinct from language-processing areas. In a study led by the cognitive scientist
Véronique Boulenger, of the Laboratory of Language Dynamics in France, the brains of
participants were scanned as they read sentences like “John grasped the object” and “Pablo
kicked the ball.” The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the
body’s movements. What’s more, this activity was concentrated in one part of the motor
cortex when the movement described was arm-related and in another part when the
movement concerned the leg.

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. 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.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive
descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. Indeed, in one
respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off
the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.

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.

Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, performed an analysis of 86

fMRI studies, published last year in the Annual Review of Psychology, and concluded that
there was substantial overlap in the brain networks used to understand stories and the
networks used to navigate interactions with other individuals — in particular, interactions
in which we’re trying to figure out the thoughts and feelings of others. Scientists call this
capacity of the brain to construct a map of other people’s intentions “theory of mind.”
Narratives offer a unique opportunity to engage this capacity, as we identify with
characters’ longings and frustrations, guess at their hidden motives and track their
encounters with friends and enemies, neighbors and lovers.

It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr.
Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies,
published in 2006 and 2009, 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. This relationship persisted even after the researchers accounted for the
possibility that more empathetic individuals might prefer reading novels. A 2010 study by
Dr. Mar found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to
them, the keener their theory of mind — an effect that was also produced by watching
movies but, curiously, not by watching television. (Dr. Mar has conjectured that because
children often watch TV alone, but go to the movies with their parents, they may
experience more “parent-children conversations about mental states” when it comes to
films.)

Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, “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.”

These findings will affirm the experience of readers who have felt illuminated and
instructed by a novel, who have found themselves comparing a plucky young woman to
Elizabeth Bennet or a tiresome pedant to Edward Casaubon. 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.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-
brain-on-fiction.html The New York Times, March 17, 2012

Annie Murphy Paul is the author, most recently, of “Origins: How the Nine Months Before
Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives.”
 These fMRI images are
from a study showing
parts of the brain lighting
up on seeing houses and
other parts on seeing
faces. The 'r' values are
correlations, with higher
positive or negative values
indicating a better match.

Source: Wikipedia