language – Australian Science

From fables to Facebook: Why do we tell stories?

Lauren — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:33:20 +0000

Cave painting, Lascaux, France, 15,000-10,000 BC

Throughout human history, stories have existed across all cultures in all forms, from ballads, poems, songs to oral history, plays, novels. Some narratives have evolved along with the human species—we are consistently drawn back to ancient parables, fables and fairytales, constantly reworking them into modern contexts.

Narrative is a gift unique to the human species, but how as it survived for so long? Is it a by-product of evolution or essential to survival? What drove us to painstakingly inscribe portraits on rocky walls in ochre and charcoal, to compose and listen to lengthy ballads of heroes’ tales, to nosily read people’s Facebook statuses about their day, to devour novels and films like we’re hungry for fictional worlds? Neuroscience and developmental psychology have begun to answer these questions, embarking on the ambitious task of explaining why we tell stories.

Storytelling is one of our most fundamental communication methods, for an obvious reason: narrative helps us cognise information. Telling intelligible, coherent stories to both ourselves and others helps our brains to organise data about our lives and our world. But when we ask why stories are so effective at helping us cognise information, the answers are surprising: it seems that somewhere in the otherwise ruthless process of natural selection, evolution has wired our brains to prefer storytelling over other forms of communication.

Good stories engage us. When we hear plain, bloodless facts, the language processing centres of our brain light up and we decode words into meaning—but when we’re told a story, not only are language processing centres lit up, but also a vast array of other regions distinct from those centres. For example, if you tell a friend a story about a dinner party at which you ate delicious roast pork, their sensory cortex will light up; or if you tell them about the game of football, their motor cortex will become active. The parts of the brain they would use if actually experiencing the event light up, even though they are only being told about it.

This is particularly interesting when considering the effect that literary techniques have on our brain activity. In a 2006 study published in NeuroImages, Spanish researchers asked participants to read both neutral words (such as chair and key) as well as words with strong odour associations (such as coffee, perfume, lavender and soap). Brain scans using an fMRI machine showed that when they read the odour-associated words, their primary olfactory cortex lit up; but when they read the neutral words, that region remained dark. In another study at Emory University, texture metaphors such as “the singer had a velvet voice

Cite this article:
Fuge L (2013-06-18 00:33:20). From fables to Facebook: Why do we tell stories?. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 29, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/psychology/from-fables-to-facebook-why-do-we-tell-stories/

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Weekly Science Picks

Charles Ebikeme — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:30:50 +0000

Bob Dylan and the curse of self-plagiarism. Disclaimer: this weeks theme largely relates to Bob Dylan. Up first — here comes a story of a Hurricane!

With frankenstorm Sandy in the news, Empirical Zeal asks the question “What is the true measure of a storm?

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Is Communication a Lost Art?

Kelly Burnes — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 07:50:17 +0000

So how far away are we from planet Earth morphing into Holodeck 5 and we all have Geordi La Forge glasses? There are several pairs of augmented reality glasses already on the market, many from brands you’ve probably never heard of, but then I’m sure you have heard of Google and their latest project in the foray.

No longer information at your fingertips, oh no, information at your eyelashes. And much more than information, as some researchers and visionaries have conjured up all sorts of ways to use these glasses. From finding directions to a new coffeehouse, online dating, downloading music, answering a phone call, no need for a handheld device.

Some have taken it a step further. Dr. Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York, seems to believe these glasses will forever change the way we interact with the world. He speaks about when you walk into a crowded room, say for a networking event where you are looking to land a new job. Your glasses will steer you who to speak with in that industry. A big red arrow will point them out to you. But in your glasses, their entire biography is laid out before your eyes. Where they went to school, how many brothers and sisters they have, the name of their dog – you have all this information. Likewise, someone wearing these glasses would have all this information about you. What questions will you ask? What would be left to discover about the people you meet at this event? What is their left to converse about? Oh right, work. You can talk about work.

The art of conversation involves the asking of questions. Wouldn’t these reality glasses just negate the need to speak with anyone? Is technology reducing our social ability to communicate with the spoken language? Is it in fact devolving our language? Or are we evolving and becoming more efficient that we no longer require the use of our vocal chords? Getting a bit far out there.

Social media has connected us, we keep “in touch

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