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.
[…]
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.
[…]
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.
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.
We no longer have to just take iconic writers’ words on the power of fiction. The New York Times’ Annie Murphy Paul explores the neuroscience of your brain on fiction and how narratives offer a way to engage the brain’s capacity to map other people’s intentions, known in psychology as “theory of mind.” (via explore-blog)
(Source: , via explore-blog)
9391. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
After David Ogilvy’s now-infamous 10 tips on writing and Henry Miller’s 11 commandments of writing, here comes a list of rules for writers from George Orwell circa 1946. (via explore-blog)
The only way to be creative over time—to not be undone by our expertise—is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don’t fully understand.
Jonah Lehrer in Imagine: How Creativity Works. (via explore-blog)
An aerial shot of Air Temple Island, this background painting shows the home of Tenzin and his family. The temple was originally built by Avatar Aang.
2/23/2012
← Older 1 ⁄ 3
