1 00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:07,080 Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff. From how stuff Works, Hey, brain stuff, 2 00:00:07,120 --> 00:00:10,760 Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. Whether it's Alfred Lord Tennyson's Ulysses 3 00:00:10,880 --> 00:00:14,360 Speaker 1: or Maya Angelou's Caged Bird, there's something about reading or 4 00:00:14,440 --> 00:00:17,600 Speaker 1: hearing a great poem that stimulates our minds, moving us 5 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:20,319 Speaker 1: to ponder the world from new angles and from a 6 00:00:20,360 --> 00:00:24,360 Speaker 1: neuroscientific point of view. That's no accident. In recent years, 7 00:00:24,400 --> 00:00:28,280 Speaker 1: researchers have used fMRI I that's functional magnetic resonance imaging 8 00:00:28,480 --> 00:00:31,560 Speaker 1: and other sophisticated tools to study how the human brain 9 00:00:31,680 --> 00:00:35,120 Speaker 1: reacts to poetry. They've discovered, among other things, that the 10 00:00:35,159 --> 00:00:37,879 Speaker 1: brain seems to be wired to recognize the rhymes and 11 00:00:37,960 --> 00:00:41,479 Speaker 1: rhythms that poets use and to differentiate them from ordinary 12 00:00:41,520 --> 00:00:45,479 Speaker 1: speech or prose. They've also found that contemplating poetic imagery 13 00:00:45,560 --> 00:00:49,040 Speaker 1: and the multiple layers of meanings and poems activates specific 14 00:00:49,080 --> 00:00:51,360 Speaker 1: areas of the brain, some of the same areas that 15 00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:55,400 Speaker 1: help us to interpret our everyday reality. So I mentioned 16 00:00:55,440 --> 00:00:58,720 Speaker 1: that our brains seem wired to recognize poetry. Let's unpack that. 17 00:00:59,320 --> 00:01:02,000 Speaker 1: In a study pub lished in the journal Frontiers of Psychology, 18 00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:05,600 Speaker 1: researchers at the UK's Banger University read an assortment of 19 00:01:05,640 --> 00:01:09,000 Speaker 1: sentences to a group of Welsh speaking subjects. Some of 20 00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:13,280 Speaker 1: the sentences conformed to the intricate poetic construction rules of konkand, 21 00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:16,000 Speaker 1: a traditional form of Welsh poetry, while others did not 22 00:01:16,120 --> 00:01:19,319 Speaker 1: follow those rules. Although the subjects knew as little about 23 00:01:19,360 --> 00:01:23,400 Speaker 1: Koncanada as I know about pronouncing Welsh, they nevertheless categorized 24 00:01:23,440 --> 00:01:26,640 Speaker 1: as good the sentences that followed the rules as compared 25 00:01:26,720 --> 00:01:30,080 Speaker 1: to other sentences. The researchers also hooked up the subjects 26 00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:33,000 Speaker 1: to E e G devices and observed a distinctive burst 27 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:35,720 Speaker 1: of electrical activity in the subject's brains that occurred in 28 00:01:35,760 --> 00:01:38,360 Speaker 1: the fraction of a second after hearing the last word 29 00:01:38,440 --> 00:01:41,640 Speaker 1: of a poetic line. We spoke with bang Or psychology 30 00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:45,319 Speaker 1: professor Gyum Cheery via email. They said, I believe that 31 00:01:45,360 --> 00:01:48,760 Speaker 1: our results argue for a profoundly intuitive origin of poetry. 32 00:01:49,120 --> 00:01:52,600 Speaker 1: Poetry appears to be built in. It's like a profound intuition. 33 00:01:52,880 --> 00:01:57,200 Speaker 1: Every human being is an unconscious poet. Poetry also seems 34 00:01:57,200 --> 00:01:59,800 Speaker 1: to affect specific areas of the brain, depending upon the 35 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:03,080 Speaker 1: gree of emotion and the complexity of the language and ideas. 36 00:02:03,640 --> 00:02:07,240 Speaker 1: In a study published in in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. 37 00:02:07,520 --> 00:02:11,399 Speaker 1: Researchers at the UK's University of Exeter had participants lay 38 00:02:11,400 --> 00:02:13,840 Speaker 1: inside an f m R I scanner while they read 39 00:02:13,919 --> 00:02:17,840 Speaker 1: various texts on a screen. The selections ranged from deliberately 40 00:02:17,919 --> 00:02:20,480 Speaker 1: dull prose such as a section from a heating equipment 41 00:02:20,520 --> 00:02:25,040 Speaker 1: installation manual, to passages from novels to samples from various poems, 42 00:02:25,280 --> 00:02:27,959 Speaker 1: a few of which the subjects had identified as their favorites. 43 00:02:28,440 --> 00:02:31,160 Speaker 1: The subjects had to rate the texts on qualities such 44 00:02:31,200 --> 00:02:33,960 Speaker 1: as how much emotion they aroused and how literary or 45 00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:37,760 Speaker 1: difficult to contemplate they were. The researchers found that the 46 00:02:37,880 --> 00:02:40,639 Speaker 1: higher the degree of emotiveness that the subjects assigned to 47 00:02:40,680 --> 00:02:44,000 Speaker 1: a sample, the more activation the scans showed. In areas 48 00:02:44,080 --> 00:02:46,360 Speaker 1: on the right side of the brain, many of the 49 00:02:46,400 --> 00:02:48,880 Speaker 1: same ones identified in a two thousand one study as 50 00:02:48,880 --> 00:02:52,200 Speaker 1: being activated by music that moved listeners to feel chills 51 00:02:52,280 --> 00:02:56,119 Speaker 1: or shivers down their spines. The examples rated as more literary. 52 00:02:56,240 --> 00:02:59,200 Speaker 1: In contrast, lit up areas mostly on the left side 53 00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:02,240 Speaker 1: of the brain, including the basil ganglia, which are involved 54 00:03:02,280 --> 00:03:06,639 Speaker 1: both in regulating movement and processing challenging sentences. The subject's 55 00:03:06,639 --> 00:03:09,720 Speaker 1: favorite poems weakly activated a network in the brain associated 56 00:03:09,720 --> 00:03:13,680 Speaker 1: with reading, but strongly activated the inferior parietal lobes, an 57 00:03:13,720 --> 00:03:18,240 Speaker 1: area associated with recognition. Yet another recent experiment, detailed in 58 00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:23,040 Speaker 1: a article in the neuroscience journal Cortex, University of Liverpool 59 00:03:23,080 --> 00:03:25,600 Speaker 1: researchers used an fMRI I to scan the brains of 60 00:03:25,639 --> 00:03:28,640 Speaker 1: subjects while they read various passages of poetry and prose 61 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:31,040 Speaker 1: in an effort to find what parts of the brain 62 00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:34,960 Speaker 1: were involved in literary awareness, the capacity to think about 63 00:03:35,080 --> 00:03:38,360 Speaker 1: and find meaning in a complex text. In half of 64 00:03:38,400 --> 00:03:41,640 Speaker 1: the examples, the final line was an unexpected twist that 65 00:03:41,680 --> 00:03:44,720 Speaker 1: Philip Davis, a professor and director of the school's Institute 66 00:03:44,760 --> 00:03:48,880 Speaker 1: of Psychology, Health and Society, refers to as an AHA moment. 67 00:03:49,480 --> 00:03:54,840 Speaker 1: One example William Wordsworth's poem She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, 68 00:03:55,080 --> 00:03:57,440 Speaker 1: about a recluse who died in seclusion, in which the 69 00:03:57,520 --> 00:03:59,800 Speaker 1: narrator drops a hint that he may have been her 70 00:04:00,080 --> 00:04:04,120 Speaker 1: requited lover. The subjects rated the passages on how poetic 71 00:04:04,160 --> 00:04:06,480 Speaker 1: they seemed and whether or not the last lines led 72 00:04:06,560 --> 00:04:10,000 Speaker 1: them to reappraise the meaning a measure of literary awareness, 73 00:04:10,680 --> 00:04:13,200 Speaker 1: David said in an email. We believe that this is 74 00:04:13,240 --> 00:04:16,040 Speaker 1: the first f m R I that examines the unfolding 75 00:04:16,040 --> 00:04:19,400 Speaker 1: effects of moving from line to line and the consequences 76 00:04:19,400 --> 00:04:22,159 Speaker 1: in terms of what we call literary awareness as compared 77 00:04:22,200 --> 00:04:26,039 Speaker 1: to more automatic and literal minded processing of meaning. The 78 00:04:26,080 --> 00:04:28,640 Speaker 1: poetic work triggered different parts of the brain related to 79 00:04:28,760 --> 00:04:32,920 Speaker 1: non automatic processing of meaning, leading to increased lively activation 80 00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:37,479 Speaker 1: of mind and a simultaneous sense of psychological reward. But 81 00:04:37,760 --> 00:04:40,800 Speaker 1: the research also suggests that reading or listening to poetry 82 00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:44,040 Speaker 1: is useful for something besides just rousing our emotions and 83 00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:48,160 Speaker 1: stimulating our brains. I mean, coffee does that. It seems 84 00:04:48,200 --> 00:04:51,000 Speaker 1: that the same mental skills that we exercise and struggling 85 00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:53,400 Speaker 1: to understand t s. Eliott's The Love Song of j 86 00:04:53,520 --> 00:04:56,920 Speaker 1: Alfred proof Rock i e. Flexible thinking, and the ability 87 00:04:56,960 --> 00:05:00,760 Speaker 1: to ponder multiple meanings also help us to navigate unpredictable 88 00:05:00,760 --> 00:05:04,760 Speaker 1: events and make choices in our everyday lives. Davis said 89 00:05:05,160 --> 00:05:08,080 Speaker 1: the calling into activation of literary awareness may have a 90 00:05:08,120 --> 00:05:12,000 Speaker 1: significant effect in challenging our default mindset. He thinks, in 91 00:05:12,040 --> 00:05:14,640 Speaker 1: other words, that if more people read poetry and god 92 00:05:14,680 --> 00:05:17,960 Speaker 1: accustomed to pondering meaning quote, it would make a difference 93 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:20,760 Speaker 1: to their capacity to think with more alertness to excite, 94 00:05:20,800 --> 00:05:24,200 Speaker 1: surprise and change. Sounds like a good excuse to revisit 95 00:05:24,240 --> 00:05:25,960 Speaker 1: some of your favorite authors or try a few new 96 00:05:25,960 --> 00:05:33,760 Speaker 1: ones now. Today's episode was written by Patrick Jake Tiger 97 00:05:33,839 --> 00:05:36,359 Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this and 98 00:05:36,440 --> 00:05:38,960 Speaker 1: lots of other topics that will excite, surprise and change, 99 00:05:39,160 --> 00:05:52,920 Speaker 1: visit our home planet has stuff works dot com.