Comments on A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing: Narrative and the brain

thanks... Fatura Basımı

2010-05-30T05:00:54.514-04:00

I feel sorta lame for not coming onto this post MU...

2010-05-18T21:22:36.315-04:00

I feel sorta lame for not coming onto this post MUCH MUCH earlier, Livia, but I think it is AWESOME! I'm a sucker for things like this article, where we're able to just THINK about what it's saying. I will definitely read more of your posts (occupational hazard of being an avid Follower of many blogs, perhaps) in the near and far future. Clearly you tackle some interesting things.

Oh, and I have two shunts in my head (one doesn't work anymore--but it's okay), so I've kinda got a feel for how my brain works a little differently. Thank God my writing brain is still fully intact. :)

This is a great post, and explains why movement gi...

2010-01-26T08:00:54.768-05:00

This is a great post, and explains why movement gives us a feeling of "opening narrative space" when we write. I always tell my writing students to have characters move around, even if they just walk across the room. If you do that, you can feel the passage come alive.

I found your blog through twitter. I have always t...

2010-01-23T19:27:38.693-05:00

I found your blog through twitter. I have always thought that the brain is amazing. Now with the new technology available to "see" what is happening, I'm even more convinced that old sayings such as "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" and "that's just the way I am" can be put aside, just as the old science has been. Because I come from a counselling and coaching viewpoint with emotional intelligence, I know that people can change and renew themselves and their patterns (habits). Wow! What hope there is!

Jenni Wright
www.emotionalintelligenceaus.com

Hi Livia- I found your blog from a link on Alan Ri...

2009-12-08T15:04:06.930-05:00

Hi Livia- I found your blog from a link on Alan Rinzler's blog. How fun. For me, this reinforces basic writing tips- involve all your senses and never let you character sit there thinking about their life. Have characters interact since relationships are inherently interesting to us. I reviewed 'Buyology' by Martin Lindstron a while ago and linked to an fMRI scan of a person watching the 'Avatar' movie trailer if anyone's interested. http://bookreadress.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-of-buy-ology-by-martin-lindstrom.html

Harveymilk -- I'm not sure about diseases, but pr...

2009-11-05T10:30:15.127-05:00

Harveymilk --
I'm not sure about diseases, but pretty much any kind of difficult cognitive ability will protect against age related cognitive decline.

I'm also wondering whether using various parts of ...

2009-11-05T07:42:53.412-05:00

I'm also wondering whether using various parts of the brain as you suggest has a preventive effect with regards to Alzheimers' Disease and other forms of dementia. It would seem that if crosswords and other puzzles help, so would complex writing.

From a writer's point of view this is indeed fasci...

2009-11-02T08:18:58.916-05:00

From a writer's point of view this is indeed fascinating. I've long been interested in the amazing things the brain can do--Norman Doidge's 'The Brain That Changes Itself' is a book I recommend to lots of people. I am sure my brain changes when I read as per the study--but when I write, I can feel an actual physical change inside my head, as if the creative process shifts me from one side of my brain to the other. It would be interesting to see what would show up if this was mapped in the same sort of way as the 'reading brains'.

Toolbox is how I like to think of it. Not instruc...

2009-10-26T08:54:49.055-04:00

Toolbox is how I like to think of it. Not instructions or algorithms for making it better -- just something for your toolbox. Although Jason's probably giving me a bit too much credit here -- the way the field is at the moment, once I tell you what the brain region does, then your guess is probably as good as mine as to what sentences will activate it.

Graham-- What would I do with such a list? I'd u...

2009-10-26T01:37:14.982-04:00

Graham--

What would I do with such a list? I'd use it as a tool for writing more effectively when I'm trying to evoke specific responses in the reader.

If, let's say, I'm trying to evoke an "out of body" feeling--let's say I'm writing some sort of paranormal story and a character is having an out of body experience--then knowing what kinds of words and phrases are likely to excite (or suppress) the functional areas involved in one's body-sense (the sense of "proprioception" I mentioned before) would certainly help me do that.

On some level, of course, most of it is going to be kind of obvious. You want to stimulate the parts of people's brains that process temperature? Use hot/cold/chilly/sweltering et cetera. Duh. That's not rocket science.

It's more the case that I think such a list would be useful simply because you can't hit the target if you don't know it exists. Again, proprioception provides a convenient example: the only reason in the world I ever heard about that brain region was because I read some baby brain development books when my first kid was born. I'm geeky that way. Knowing that humans do have a physiologically defined sense of how our bodies are arranged in space (something I hadn't known before) means that when I'm writing I can include that in the list of reactions I can try to evoke in the reader.

Yeah, we all know about sight/sound/touch/taste/smell, but I'm guessing that there are a bunch of other funky little brain regions that people like Livia know all about but on which the rest of us are clueless. I'm betting there's some fun stuff in that list that at the very least could expand out toolbox as writers.

But, you know, I'm not a neuroscientist, so I defer to Livia to draw up such a list and posit words and phrasings that might tweak those neurons...

I'd like to know if there's a difference in readin...

2009-10-25T21:08:59.557-04:00

I'd like to know if there's a difference in reading the passages silently and reading them aloud. I can't speak for others, but I know that my imagination is a lot more vivid when I read aloud, and that I let my voice explore the text more.

Just curious.

I've seen people write to formulae before, I don't think it ever works. That said, there are exercises--there are always exercises!--to help. One of my favourites:

Pick a scene from one of your stories.
Divide a piece of paper into 2 columns.
Write all the senses, save sight, on the left.
Write down all the possible stimuli on the right.
E.g. the sounds outside, what the room smelled like, what the furniture smelled like etc.
Rewrite the scene, using at least 2 of the new sensations.

I find this really helpful...hmm, I might blog about using the senses tomorrow...

Livia, I love your blog. This is an exciting and e...

2009-10-25T10:43:14.939-04:00

Livia, I love your blog. This is an exciting and entertaining look at creative writing. I thoroughly believe writing to be an art, craft, business and science.

In regard to the topic at hand: these are exciting things for me to hear. Due to what I write--paranormal chick lit and erotic romance--I need readers to have a very specific reaction other than a compulsion to finish my book. I need them to need to read it because they are experiencing these things. Considering your findings, it seems that it is very possible to get the reader involved in the story.

Looking forward to more about this and your blog posts in general.

Graham -- Along with the nerdy theme, there are MR...

2009-10-24T11:54:48.862-04:00

Graham -- Along with the nerdy theme, there are MRI physicists who program MRI scanning sequences so that the noise plays a song.
Regarding biological motion -- most studies that I know of use human movement as stimuli. However, you can't design an experiment to prove why some region evolved. You can only find out what it does now. So any thoughts about some region's original purpose will involve speculation. It's very possible that the region has something to do with hunting as well -- although I'd say it's not just that. Humans are very good at discerning characteristics of other humans based just on the way the move (sex, age, etc), and this is more relevant to social interaction than hunting.
Malcolm -- Yeah, I don't think any kind of algorithm could arise from this for writers -- at least any kind of useful one. More brain regions is not necessarily better. This is better used as brainstorming fodder.
Sue -- I could speculate that critiquing would involve more activation in prefrontal regions ( which are involved in attention and cognitive effort), as well as more activation in regions involved in introspection as the critiquer thinks about how the story affects them. But these are wild speculations on my part.

I've gotten lost in a story, so this makes perfe...

2009-10-24T09:49:46.641-04:00

I've gotten *lost* in a story, so this makes perfect sense to me. When I read a really good story, I'm becoming a character, interacting with the story.

I'd be very interested in seeing what a brain scan of someone critiquing a passage would look like, as opposed to just reading it.

I hope to never write based on the kinds of algori...

2009-10-24T09:25:38.514-04:00

I hope to never write based on the kinds of algorithms I suspect will one day arise based on this kind of research. It appears more valuable, though, for helping professions practitioners working with "slow" children, brain-injured individuals, and potentially with mental illness than it does for writers.

Malcolm

What are you going to do with the list, Jason? I s...

2009-10-24T07:07:06.248-04:00

What are you going to do with the list, Jason? I suppose if you know the relative locations of regions you're triggering, you could create moving patterns across the brain (back and forth waves, circling excitement, centre-out explosions, etc.) Fun, but nerdy on the level of programmers who work out the tones that variable speed disc drives play when accessing different sections of data so that they can write tunes with data searches.

More seriously though, Livia, why would you assume a sensitivity to biological motion was to do with human sociability. Isn't it more likely to be about detecting and tracking prey? Or have they done the studies with non-human species to eliminate that?

Jason -- hmm, good question. I will have to think...

2009-10-24T01:33:49.229-04:00

Jason -- hmm, good question. I will have to think about this and get back to you. I probably won't be able to do it in the next few posts, but I'll let you know when I address it.

I think that's pretty fascinating. Although on an...

2009-10-24T01:25:33.174-04:00

I think that's pretty fascinating. Although on an intuitive level, recommending that we incorporate more of the five senses into every scene makes, well, _sense_, it's cool to understand why that should be the case: because it literally stimulates people's brains more broadly.

Or it's cool to understand that when we use a specific verb like "run" instead of simply "go," we're likely to excite those motor neurons as well as the strictly conceptual neurons that understand motion generally. I'm inferring, here, that this would be the case; obviously I haven't read the study.

However, what I was really hoping to read in this post was something a little more hands-on (like the above example) that I can take with me back to my keyboard. As a subject for your next post, could you give us a list of distinct, excitable functional regions in the brain and what kinds of words/phrases are likely to excite them?

I mean, for some it'll be pretty obvious--the words "bitter," "sweet," "juicy" et cetera are likely to activate those taste neurons. But for others it will be less clear. What, for example, should I write to excite the neurons that process proprioception?

If you could give us a list of brain regions, and a sample sentence or two for each, that would really rock.

Cool blog!

Comments on *A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing*: Narrative and the brain