An interesting article caught my eye the other day. The title was, "Shakespeare and Wordsworth Boost the Brain, New Research Reveals." The article summarizes a study by researchers at Liverpool University who found that reading classical literature had a beneficial effect on the mind. Using brain scans, they found that subjects who read Shakespeare showed more brain activity than subjects who read the "translated" versions of the same text written in a more straightforward and modern language. Turns out that unusual words, surprising phrases, and difficult sentence structure cause more brain activity and shift the brain to do more thinking and reading.
Poetry had an especially strong effect. Here is a Wordsworth passage, and its translation, that was used in the study:
She lived unknown and few could know,
when Lucy ceased to be.
But she is in her grave and oh,
the difference to me.
She lived a life in the country,
and nobody seems to know or care,
but now she is dead,
and I feel her loss.
The first passage activated both the left hemisphere, associated with language, and the right hemisphere related to emotion and autobiographical memory.
I really liked the fact that poetry was particularly good at opening a part of the brain associated with autobiographical memory, helping the reader to reflect on their own experiences. Here is a quote by Prof. Philip Davis, "Poetry is not just a matter of style. It is a matter of deep versions of experience that add the emotional and biographical to the cognitive. This is the argument for serious language in serious literature for serious human situations, instead of self-help books or the easy reads that merely reinforce predictable opinions and conventional self-images."
The original summary was published in the Telegraph 1/13/2013. It was reprinted in the Dana Foundations newsletter, "Brain in the News." Vol. 20, No. 1. January 2013.
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