Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today's episode is another
Speaker 1: classic from our archives. If you had a chance to
Speaker 1: listen to our episode back in the beginning of May
Speaker 1: about Edgar Allan Poe, which included a reading of his
Speaker 1: poem The Raven, there's a good chance that different parts
Speaker 1: of your brain activated while listening to the episode versus
Speaker 1: the poem. We know this because of researchers who asked
Speaker 1: the question of the day, is the human brain hardwired
Speaker 1: for poetry? Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogel Baum. Here, whether
Speaker 1: it's Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ulysses or Maya Angelou's Caged Bird,
Speaker 1: there's something about reading or hearing a great poem that
Speaker 1: stimulates our minds, moving us to ponder the world from
Speaker 1: new angles and from a neuroscientific point of view. That's
Speaker 1: no accident. In recent years, researchers have used fMRI I
Speaker 1: that's functional magnetic resonance imaging and other sophisticated tools to
Speaker 1: study how the human brain reacts to poetry. They've discovered,
Speaker 1: among other things, that the brain seems to be wired
Speaker 1: to recognize the rhymes and rhythms that poets use and
Speaker 1: to differentiate them from ordinary speech or prose. They've also
Speaker 1: found that contemplating poetic imagery and the multiple layers of
Speaker 1: meanings and poems activates specific areas of the brain, some
Speaker 1: of the same areas that help us to interpret our
Speaker 1: everyday reality. So I mentioned that our brains seem wired
Speaker 1: to recognize poetry. Let's unpack that. In a study published
Speaker 1: in the journal Frontiers of Psychology, researchers at the UK's
Speaker 1: Banger University read an assortment of sentences to a group
Speaker 1: of Welsh speaking subjects. Some of the sentences conformed to
Speaker 1: the intricate poetic construction rules of konkand, a traditional form
Speaker 1: of Welsh poetry, while others did not follow those rules.
Speaker 1: Although the subjects knew as little about Koncanada as I
Speaker 1: know about pronouncing Welsh, they nevertheless categorized as good these
Speaker 1: sentences that followed the rules as compared to other sentences.
Speaker 1: The researchers also hooked up the subje X to E
Speaker 1: e G devices and observed a distinctive burst of electrical
Speaker 1: activity in the subject's brains that occurred in the fraction
Speaker 1: of a second after hearing the last word of a
Speaker 1: poetic line. We spoke with bang Or psychology professor Gyum
Speaker 1: Cheery via email. They said, I believe that our results
Speaker 1: argue for a profoundly intuitive origin of poetry. Poetry appears
Speaker 1: to be built in. It's like a profound intuition. Every
Speaker 1: human being is an unconscious poet. Poetry also seems to
Speaker 1: affect specific areas of the brain, depending upon the degree
Speaker 1: of emotion and the complexity of the language and ideas.
Speaker 1: In a study published in in the Journal of Consciousness Studies,
Speaker 1: researchers at the UK's University of Exeter had participants lay
Speaker 1: inside an f M R I scanner while they read
Speaker 1: various texts on a screen. The selections ranged from deliberately
Speaker 1: dull prose such as a section from a heating equipment
Speaker 1: installation manual, to passages from novels to samples from various poems,
Speaker 1: a few of which the subjects had identified as their favorites.
Speaker 1: The subjects had to rate the texts on qualities such
Speaker 1: as how much emotion they aroused and how literary or
Speaker 1: difficult to contemplate they were. The researchers found that the
Speaker 1: higher the degree of emotiveness that the subjects assigned to
Speaker 1: a sample. The more activation the scans showed in areas
Speaker 1: on the right side of the brain, many of the
Speaker 1: same ones identified in a two thousand one study as
Speaker 1: being activated by music that moved listeners to feel chills
Speaker 1: or shivers down their spines. The examples rated as more literary.
Speaker 1: In contrast, lit up areas mostly on the left side
Speaker 1: of the brain, including the basal ganglia, which are involved
Speaker 1: both in regulating movement and processing challenging sentences. The subject's
Speaker 1: favorite poems weakly activated a network in the brain associated
Speaker 1: with reading, but strongly activated the inferior parietal lobes, an
Speaker 1: area associated with recognition. Yet another recent experiment, detailed in
Speaker 1: a article in the neuroscience journal Cortex, University of Liverpool
Speaker 1: researchers used an fMRI I to scan the brains of
Speaker 1: subjects while they read various passages of poetry and prose,
Speaker 1: in an effort to mind what parts of the brain
Speaker 1: were involved in literary awareness, the capacity to think about
Speaker 1: and find meaning in a complex text. In half of
Speaker 1: the examples. The final line was an unexpected twist that
Speaker 1: Philip Davis, a professor and director of the School's Institute
Speaker 1: of Psychology, Health and Society refers to as an AHA moment.
Speaker 1: One example, William Wordsworth's poem She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways,
Speaker 1: about a recluse who died in seclusion, in which the
Speaker 1: narrator drops a hint that he may have been her
Speaker 1: unrequited lover. The subjects rated the passages on how poetic
Speaker 1: they seemed and whether or not the last lines led
Speaker 1: them to reappraise the meaning a measure of literary awareness.
Speaker 1: Davis said in an email. We believe that this is
Speaker 1: the first f m R I that examines the unfolding
Speaker 1: effects of moving from line to line and the consequences
Speaker 1: in terms of what we call literary awareness as compared
Speaker 1: to more automatic and literal minded processing of meaning. The
Speaker 1: poetic work triggered different parts of the brain related to
Speaker 1: non automatic process thing of meaning, leading to increased lively
Speaker 1: activation of mind and a simultaneous sense of psychological reward.
Speaker 1: But the research also suggests that reading or listening to
Speaker 1: poetry is useful for something besides just rousing our emotions
Speaker 1: and stimulating our brains. I mean, coffee does that. It
Speaker 1: seems that the same mental skills that we exercise and
Speaker 1: struggling to understand t s. Eliott's The Love Song of
Speaker 1: j Alfred proof Rock i e. Flexible thinking and the
Speaker 1: ability to ponder multiple meanings also help us to navigate
Speaker 1: unpredictable events and make choices in our everyday lives. Davis
Speaker 1: said the calling into activation of literary awareness may have
Speaker 1: a significant effect in challenging our default mindset. He thinks,
Speaker 1: in other words, that if more people read poetry and
Speaker 1: god accustomed to pondering meaning quote, it would make a
Speaker 1: difference to their capacity to think with more alertness to excite,
Speaker 1: surprise and change. Sounds like a good excuse to revisit
Speaker 1: some of your favorite authors or try a few new
Speaker 1: ones now. Today's episode is based on the article the
Speaker 1: human brain is Hardwired for Poetry on how Stuffworks dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Patrick J. Kaiger. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: Com and is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts
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