“These experiences are the mystic mental states that sages from days immemorial have preached as the highest good of human life. And in the case of literature, at least, the good really exists. The stretch has been connected by modern neuroscientists to significant increases in both our generosity and our sense of personal well-being. Which is to s... See more

An alternative perspective on life develops, along with a more comprehensive understanding which results in actions being motivated more by an intuitive capacity than by the self-centered approach to action through normal conscious behavior.

A study published in February 2012 at Emory University found that a region of the brain important for sensing texture through touch, called the parietal operculum, is also activated when someone listens to a sentence with a description of texture, but only if a metaphor is used

a story as “a narrative-emotional technology that helped our ancestors cope with the psychological challenges posed by human biology.”

Studies have shown that stories offer a unique opportunity to engage in “theory of mind” – our ability to understand and empathize with another’s mental state.

In his intriguing book Wonderworks Fletcher identifies 25 narrative “tools” or “inventions” that trigger traceable, evidenced neurological outcomes in the reader/listener/viewer. He points out that although the science is in its infancy, early findings reveal that “combined with the established areas of psychological and psychiatric research, they ... See more

Our brains grow by being able to enter into other minds and imagine ourselves as other people. ...literature gives you direct access, it literally allows you to leap into the mind of Jane Austen or Homer or Maya Angelou etc., and just go.

The storyteller himself is one of the most important elements in traditions, in using language to make an end run around the verbal intellect, to affect a mode of consciousness not reached by the normal verbal intellectual apparatus.

Neuroscientists are building a powerful case that metaphor is far more important to human cognition than has ever been imagined. Many argue it’s the fundamental way that brains understand abstract concepts, such as love, joy, society and economy. It’s simply not possible to comprehend these ideas in any useful sense, then, without attaching them to... See more