By now you might have come across Annie Murphy Paul's NYTimes Opinion piece, "Your Brain on Fiction." Why bring it up again? I am curious to know whether hearing the spoken word works the same way as reading fiction. My sense is that there are parallels.
The upshot of the article is that brain science has revealed what we intuitively know: "Stories stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life." How does it happen? Metaphors - and the more sensory the better. Words describing how something looks, tastes, smells, feels and sounds stimulate brain areas which respond to the images as if they were real. The brain is an equal opportunity organ. Excerpt.
"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."
What got me thinking about listening to sensory rich metaphors versus reading them in fiction is something I wrote in 2003 that I had inscribed on bookmarks I gave away to clients.
"Storytelling thrives on imagination. Images touch the heart and become sensations, sensations trigger memories, memories create meaning annd meaning leads to listener action."
With this discovery in mind I subsequently wrote and taught law students and lawyers (among others) about the primal importance of incorporating the five senses in oral presentations to inform and persuade. The guidance changed the speaker and the listener both. You could feel trial stories vividly come to life.
I am convinced that we "homo narrans" use stories to navigate the social realm, to understand feelings, desires and motivations of our fellow global inhabitants, comprehend lessons, make sense of mistakes, and the like. Metaphors smooth our efforts to translate by showing us show how "this is like that." Apparently, the more sensory our metaphors the more easily we connect and relate with one another. And that's not fiction.
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