Poetry Stimulates the Brain like Music Does, New Study Finds

Amy Taylor October 16, 2013

Music is known to have therapeutic benefits. It relaxes our mind, increases our concentration levels, and makes us feel refreshed. Now, if you don’t feel like listening to the same playlist in your music player, you may want to recite your favourite poem and experience the same benefits music has to offer.

In a new study published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, scientists found that more emotionally charged writing stimulated the same areas of the brain that are activated when we listen to music. Such areas, which had been previously shown to give rise to the "shivers down the spine" is caused by an emotional reaction to music.

In the study, 13 volunteers were asked to read one of their favourite passages of poetry whilst the researchers tracked their brain activities using the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology. Participants were all faculty members and senior graduate students in English at the University of Exeter.

The brain scans showed more activation in areas associated with memory than the ‘reading areas’, indicating that reading a favourite passage is a kind of recollection. Specifically, reading a poem activates the posterior cingulate cortex and medial temporal lobes which have been previously linked to introspection.

This is the first study to look at the differing responses of the brain to poetry and prose.

"Some people say it is impossible to reconcile science and art, but new brain imaging technology means we are now seeing a growing body of evidence about how the brain responds to the experience of art.” says lead author Professor Adam Zeman, a cognitive neurologist from the University of Exeter Medical School. “This was a preliminary study, but it is all part of work that is helping us to make psychological, biological, anatomical sense of art."

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Poetry is like music to the mind, scientists prove