The Science of Why We Love Stories: What Happens in Your Brain When You Read

By Kimberly Huynh

Do you ever wonder to yourself what goes on in your mind when you lose yourself in a story? Have you

ever been so consumed by a book that you lose sight of the outside world? It doesn’t matter what genre

book it is; storytelling has a profound power to take us readers to new places, allowing us to connect with

characters and arousing strong emotions. When losing yourself in books, our brain has a complicated

relationship with our minds and stories, which is unraveled by neuroscience. Neuroscience has shown

how stories affect our feelings, ideas, and social interactions.

Several brain regions are activated when you read a story. These include: Language Processing (Broca's and Wernicke's Areas):

Broca's Area, located in the frontal lobe, is significant because it is involved in language production and comprehension, for example, helping form sentences and understanding the narrative structure. Wernicke's Area, located in the temporal lobe, is essential for those language comprehension processes, particularly when reading, as it helps decode the meaning of phrases and words, enabling you to understand the story.

● Emotion Centers (Amygdala and Hippocampus)

The amygdala mostly controls the processing of emotions such as fear, sadness, and happiness. It also influences our reactions to these emotions when we are told stories. This increases your emotional investment and makes it easier for you to relate to the character's path. The hippocampus, on the other hand, is essential for memory formation and recall, which increases the meaning of a tale by enabling you to connect it to your personal experiences.

● The Visual Cortex

This allows you to interpret visual information, which can be done by reading books. Enables improvement to your ability by immersing yourself into narrative allowing you to visualize what is happening in the book whether it is characters, scenery, and actions.

● Release of Dopamine

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter linked to reward and pleasure which is released when reading stories. As you’re constantly being hooked into the story, the chemical reaction makes you feel satisfied, and happy making you want to read more as those pages are being turned.

● Mirror Neurons

Mirror Neurons are what we respond to actions that we observe in others, which can be examples of involvement with empathy and social understanding. Such as, when reading about a character’s actions and emotions, these neurons allow us readers to vicariously experience the feelings, and deepen our emotional connections to the story and the characters.

By enabling the brain to replicate these experiences and feelings of characters, reading stories especially when being told from many viewpoints, improves empathy. This is shown in literacy literature where these well-developed characters and emotions help readers understand, remember, and comprehend these stories. By expressing cultural values and forming identities, stories not only improve memory of difficult concepts but also fortify social relationships.

Frequent exposure to reading books helps foster critical thinking skills, improving emotional and cognitive development. Using books is able to help people interpret events and achieve healing, narrative therapy provides fresh insights into personal struggles. In the end, storytelling has a significant impact on our feelings, thoughts, and social interactions, encouraging empathy and community connection.