Within the “communications community,” we often discuss the importance of narrative storytelling in engaging readers. But how often do we think about the neuroscience behind it?
In a recent study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, a psychology and computer science researcher at the University of Southern California looked at how people’s brains reacted while they were reading stories. Morteza Dehghani and his co-authors found the regions of the brain stimulated were connected to how we think about ourselves and others, suggesting that narratives really do help people feel more empathy.
The researchers began by culling 40 blog posts in English on personal topics. Each story was then translated into Mandarin Chinese and Farsi, and read by 90 study participants in their native language as their brains were scanned by an MRI machine.
The patterns of activity that emerged in the scans were very similar, regardless of the language, which suggests that all humans process stories the same way in order to construct meaning. The patterns also engaged the brain’s “default mode network,” which involves sections of the brain responsible for things like accessing personal memories and understanding the emotions of others.
"One of the biggest mysteries of neuroscience is how we create meaning out of the world. Stories are deep-rooted in the core of our nature and help us create this meaning," corresponding author Jonas Kaplan told Science Daily.