Your brain on fiction
From Cory at Boingboing:
”A forthcoming journal article in Psychological Science reports on the research of scientists from the Dynamic Cognition Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis into what brain activity takes place while we read narrative stories. The study concludes that our brains simulate the action in the story, echoing it as we read.”
Further proof that the brain is active during the imagination of events and characters that occurs while reading in the same areas as when it thinks it or does it in the real world. Yet another in a long line of experiments (including the much talked about mirror neurons) that allude to the brain having a single system of representation that is used in many forms. I’m always shocked it takes the science world this long to come to conclusions like this which would seem rather obvious to others. I have to admit I’m always surprised that the research world is surprised by this, and even more that it took them this long to get this far. No offense to you tireless neuroscientists, of course.
Click the image for boingboing’s post on the study.
