Your Brain on Fiction

Boing is too good at breaking interesting stories. Damn them! In this article which quotes "The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) Mental Health Program" the journal, Psychological Science will publish a report that says that reader mirror the actions of characters from the same brain placed than if they were performing the actions.

To me this would provide clues about entering another person's brain via fictional narratives. If an experience is common it will be accessible to a reader that tries to construct it. Or if an experience is expressed through the language of common experience then even though it may be exotic it can also be digestible. If I wrote about walking on the moon and used metaphors of walking in a blow-up castle, or walking underwater, then it may be easier to convey than if I tried explain that the ground on the moon is hard but I'm not as heavy and there is very little air resistance.




Link to the article.