How the brain listens to literature

Fig 1. Results of the localizer scans.
Results of the localizer scans: Whole-brain analysis results for the
action localizer scan in yellow and for the mentalizing localizer in blue.



How do people understand fiction?  What happens in their brains when either reading or listening to a piece of fiction?  And why do some people prefer character based works, and others action adventure?  From this study, it seems there may be a genetic basis for these choices rather than the preference being learned.  It probably explains why some writers prefer creating character based fiction and others action based.  As we're discovering, "we're born this way," to quote Lady Gaga, and free will has little to do with it.  

 This research shows that some people primarily get involved in the action, visualizing the story line as it progresses as shown by the portions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain as shown above.  For others, the reading or listening experience activates different portions of the right and left hemispheres, sections more involved with empathizing with the characters.

 This implies an organic predisposition for some people to prefer literature or film that is action driven, while others are predisposed to relate to character.

 Here is the report with a link to the original study in the attribution.
*  *  *  *  *


How the brain listens to literature

When we listen to stories, we immerse ourselves into the situations described and empathize with the feelings of the characters. Only recently has it become possible to find out how exactly this process works in the brain. Scientists have now succeeded using an fMRI scanner to measure how people listen to a literary story.

Everybody immerses themselves in stories in their own way. However, due to technological limitations, how we comprehend literature has only previously been studied at a group level without looking at individual differences. Willems and Nijhof show in this study that people focus on different aspects of the story when listening to literature.

Narratives play an important role in human life, and it is more and more acknowledged that fiction is a powerful player in human development as well as in adulthood. Despite its importance, it is largely unknown what the brain networks are that support our unique ability to move into a fiction world. While it is uncontroversial that people are moved into fiction worlds, it is unclear how readers do this.

One way in which participants engage with stories, is via simulation of the story’s content. Recent philosophical and neuroscientific evidence shows that it is important to distinguish at least two neurocognitively distinct components of simulation when considering the understanding of narratives.

  • First, sensori-motor simulation is evidenced by activation of motor and visual cortices when people comprehend language related to actions and scenery. 
  • The second component relates to our ability to understand thoughts, intentions and beliefs of others, sometimes called mentalizing. The distinction between these two components important for fiction understanding is theoretically motivated, and supported by neural findings.

In this study participants listened to excerpts (4 to 8 minutes long) from literary novels, while neural activity was measured across the whole brain by means of fMRI. We chose to use listening rather than word-by-word reading, because relatively long fragments are used and therefore listening is expected to be the most convenient option for participants in the scanner. Supposedly, this would not result in crucial differences in terms of the mental simulation they employ.

Audiobooks in the fMRI scanner
Participants listened to chapters of different audiobooks, for example Island Guests by Vonne van der Meer and Thaw by Rascha Peper. Roel Willems of the Donders Institute at Radboud University says, 'We found that there were strong individual preferences; some participants were particularly focused on understanding the intentions and feelings of the main character, while other participants were much more focused on visualizing the actions of the characters.'

Previous studies did find differences in brain activity between listening and reading (with more individual differences in activity for reading), but also several core regions shared between modalities. More importantly for the purposes of the present study, it has been shown that regions involved in mentalizing and action understanding are activated independent of presentation.

Understanding Literature

by Robin Mayhead

Click to order from
Powell's Books
People differ greatly in how they engage in fiction, but the neurocognitive mechanisms behind narrative engagement remain unclear. Here we use neuroimaging to investigate individual differences during the comprehension of literary fiction stories.

Empathizing with literature
'Most people can both empathize with feelings as well as imagine the visual surroundings and the actions of the characters,' according to Willems, 'but our fMRI results show that each subject has a preference for one over the other.' This neuroscientific study is one of the first to prove individual differences when it comes to empathizing with literature.

Words, sentences, stories
This study is also unique because Willems studies 'real' language, i.e. language used in everyday life. 'Language in the brain is often studied by providing subjects with individual words and sentences. But, of course, language is much more than that! We let our participants listen to longer stories. This makes our publication a good example of brain research studying language that is very similar to the language people actually use.'

Related stories:
Story Source:  Materials provided by Radboud University. Annabel D. Nijhof, Roel M. Willems. Simulating Fiction: Individual Differences in Literature Comprehension Revealed with fMRI. PLOS ONE, 2015

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Greek Bronze Age ended 100 years earlier than thought

Image
Source: www.shef.ac.uk The charred remains of Assiros Toumba in Greece. Writing historical fiction set in the Greek Bronze Age?  Or simply enjoy reading this genre'?  Here's a study you may find interesting. C onventional estimates for the collapse of the Aegean civilization may be incorrect by up to a century, according to new radiocarbon analyses. While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BCE, this latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier. www.weather-forecast.com Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece, to be radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4% accuracy using Bayesian statistical methodology at the University of Oxford and the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg, Germany. Researcher Dr Ken Wardle says, 'These new results tell a story that is totall
Read more

How the lives of Georgian gaolbirds and highwaymen shaped modern Britain

Image
Writing historical fiction requires solid research of available materials and databases.  The key word here is available.   So news of a new publicly accessible database that allows an author to research a very interesting past era is priceless almost beyond words.   I expect some exciting fiction to come out of this announcement. Here's the story, with a link to the source in the attribution. *  *  *  *  * London Lives, a landmark project led by Professor Bob Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield and Professor Tim Hitchcock from the University of Sussex, has uncovered a mass of extraordinary new evidence which reveals how the lives of thousands of 18th-century poor and criminal Londoners helped shape modern Britain. Based on evidence made available in a publicly available database, the study sheds new light on the everyday lives of thieves, prostitutes, vagrants, highwaymen, con-men, paupers and jailbirds, revealing how their daily fight for survival led to t
Read more

Mood Instability and Your Characters

Image
You're putting together a character who's mood simply bounces all over the place, happy one moment, in a fit of rage the next.  Researchers at King's College London note that this sort of mood instability is part of a number of mental health disorders.  So how do you structure the personality and behavior of a character like this?  Below is the King's College report, along with a brief description from mentalhealth.com, of typical behavior, sometimes in the extreme, of a person who is very emotionally unstable.  This is offered strictly as a guide for crafting character in fiction - and NOT for the amateur diagnosis of the state of someone's mental health.  That is always best left to trained professionals. Another note about emotionally unstable behavior:  as any parent will tell you, this is how adolescents and teen-agers often behave.  It's a normal part of growing up - but it is a matter of degree .  In the extreme, however, this behavior can be diag
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f
Read more

Poor Mental Health, Casual Sex Reinforce Each Other

Image
Self-loathing and disgust are all too often the result of a one night stand - for both men and women. Now study suggests that poor mental health and casual sex actually feed off each other in teens and young adults, with each one contributing to the other over time. Researchers found that teens who showed depressive symptoms were more likely than others to engage in casual sex as young adults. In addition, those who engaged in casual sex were more likely to later seriously consider suicide. “Several studies have found a link between poor mental health and casual sex, but the nature of that association has been unclear,” said Sara Sandberg-Thoma, lead author of the study at The Ohio State University. “There’s always been a question about which one is the cause and which is the effect. This study provides evidence that poor mental health can lead to casual sex, but also that casual sex leads to additional declines in mental health.” Poor mental health and casual sex  linked
Read more