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. Words like “lavender,” “cinnamon” and “soap,” for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells.But recording what happens in the brain at a given moment tells us only how the brain reacts to a given stimulus. It doesn't give us an explanation of the experience. Do a brain scan of someone being hit in the head with a hammer and the brain's pain centers will doubtless light up — or do whatever it is the brain does under such circumstances. The reason a writer uses a metaphor is in the hope that the metaphor will elicit a specific reaction in the reader. If it does, the brain scan will record that.
This, it seems to me, is another example of something that is touted to tell us a good deal more than it in fact does.
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