Tag Archives: prose

The brain and poetry; congratulations to Alice Munro on her 2013 Nobel prize

There’s an intriguing piece of research from the University of Exeter (UK) about poetry and the brain. From an Oct. 9, 2013 University of Exeter news release (also on EurekAlert),

New brain imaging technology is helping researchers to bridge the gap between art and science by mapping the different ways in which the brain responds to poetry and prose.

Scientists at the University of Exeter used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, which allows them to visualise which parts of the brain are activated to process various activities. No one had previously looked specifically at the differing responses in the brain to poetry and prose.

In research published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, the team found activity in a “reading network” of brain areas which was activated in response to any written material. But they also found that more emotionally charged writing aroused several of the regions in the brain which respond to music. These areas, predominantly on the right side of the brain, had previously been shown as to give rise to the “shivers down the spine” caused by an emotional reaction to music. .

When volunteers read one of their favourite passages of poetry, the team found that areas of the brain associated with memory were stimulated more strongly than ‘reading areas’, indicating that reading a favourite passage is a kind of recollection.

In a specific comparison between poetry and prose, the team found evidence that poetry activates brain areas, such as the posterior cingulate cortex and medial temporal lobes, which have been linked to introspection.

I did find the Journal of Consciousness Studies in two places (here [current issues] and here [archived issues]) but can’t find the article in my admittedly speedy searches on the website and via Google. Unfortunately the university news release did not include a citation (as so many of them now do); presumably the research will be published soon.

I’d like to point out a couple of things about the research, the sample was small (13) and not randomized (faculty and students from the English department). From the news release,

Professor Adam Zeman, a cognitive neurologist from the University of Exeter Medical School, worked with colleagues across Psychology and English to carry out the study on 13 volunteers, all faculty members and senior graduate students in English. Their brain activity was scanned and compared when reading literal prose such as an extract from a heating installation manual, evocative passages from novels, easy and difficult sonnets, as well as their favourite poetry.

Professor Zeman said: “Some people say it is impossible to reconcile science and art, but new brain imaging technology means we are now seeing a growing body of evidence about how the brain responds to the experience of art. This was a preliminary study, but it is all part of work that is helping us to make psychological, biological, anatomical sense of art.”

Arguably, people who’ve spent significant chunks of their lives studying and reading poetry and prose might have developed capacities the rest of us have not. For a case in point, there’s a Sept. 26, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily about research on ballet dancers’ brains and their learned ability to suppress dizziness,

The research suggests that years of training can enable dancers to suppress signals from the balance organs in the inner ear.

Normally, the feeling of dizziness stems from the vestibular organs in the inner ear. These fluid-filled chambers sense rotation of the head through tiny hairs that sense the fluid moving. After turning around rapidly, the fluid continues to move, which can make you feel like you’re still spinning.

Ballet dancers can perform multiple pirouettes with little or no feeling of dizziness. The findings show that this feat isn’t just down to spotting, a technique dancers use that involves rapidly moving the head to fix their gaze on the same spot as much as possible.

Researchers at Imperial College London recruited 29 female ballet dancers and, as a comparison group, 20 female rowers whose age and fitness levels matched the dancers’.

The volunteers were spun around in a chair in a dark room. They were asked to turn a handle in time with how quickly they felt like they were still spinning after they had stopped. The researchers also measured eye reflexes triggered by input from the vestibular organs. Later, they examined the participants’ brain structure with MRI scans.

In dancers, both the eye reflexes and their perception of spinning lasted a shorter time than in the rowers.

Yes, they too have a small sample. Happily, you can find a citation and a link to the research at the end of the ScienceDaily news item.

ETA Oct. 10, 2013 at 1:10 pm PDT: The ballet dancer research was not randomized but  that’s understandable as researchers were trying to discover why these dancers don’t experience dizziness. It should be noted the researchers did test the ballet dancers against a control group. By contrast, the researchers at the University of Exeter seemed to be generalizing results from a specialized sample to a larger population.

Alice Munro news

It was announced today (Thursday, Oct. 10, 2013) that Canada’s Alice Munro has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature. Here’s more from an Oct. 10, 2013 news item on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news website,

Alice Munro wins the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Canadian woman to take the award since its launch in 1901.

Munro, 82, only the 13th woman given the award, was lauded by the Swedish Academy during the Nobel announcement in Stockholm as the “master of the contemporary short story.”

“We’re not saying just that she can say a lot in just 20 pages — more than an average novel writer can — but also that she can cover ground. She can have a single short story that covers decades, and it works,” said Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.

Reached in British Columbia by CBC News on Thursday morning, Munro said she always viewed her chances of winning the Nobel as “one of those pipe dreams” that “might happen, but it probably wouldn’t.”

Congratulations Ms. Munro! For the curious, there’s a lot more about Alice Munro and about her work in the CBC news item.