Brain on Fiction

[psikeyhackr]

Now for something completely different:

Your Brain on Fiction

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/op...ewanted=1&_r=1

Of course I would be interested in the effect of good sci-fi with good science on the brains of grade school kids.

psik

[stbnasa]

This was a cool article. I always like to read about research into the nature of human realty. Here, while it would seem obvious via anecdotal evidence that fiction is closely linked to our reality it's interesting to see research into how it is processed literally just as the rest of our surroundings.

[ping2richard]

I like your article. Sometime it is difficult to make difference between fiction and reality. The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life. I am agree with this point.

[kennychaffin]

Thanks for that. Great article.