Fiction is Food for the Noodle

I love books. It's actually something stronger than love; a deep, desperate need for the written word. I'm not that taken with non-fiction; it is when I have in my arms the poetic prose that is a novel that I become alive. 

I find myself now rereading a book that I have previously devoured oh, say, five times. And yet I find myself postponing night-night, alternatively chuckling and being breathless with anticipation, despite my familiarity with the plot.  

And yet other perks besides entertainment arises from non-fiction fascination. 

Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.  

The parts of our brains involving the senses begin to perk up when reading about smells, descriptive objects, and movements.

The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated . . . Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings. 

And by the fact that we experience that which others' experience, we become more kind. 

It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests . . . individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective. This relationship persisted even after the researchers accounted for the possibility that more empathetic individuals might prefer reading novels . . . a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their theory of mind — an effect that was also produced by watching movies but, curiously, not by watching television.

Maybe if children were read books more they would be nicer to others . . ?

Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, “is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.”