Storytelling: A Voxel-Based Analysis

In storytelling trainings, Julie and I describe a story as a "flight simulator for your brain". It's a compelling metaphor... and a pretty accurate description of a growing line of research that shows how stories approximate experience.

In a previous life I was a neuroscientist, so humor me for a moment. When we put patients into a fMRI brain scanner (over at the VA near the UW hospital), we could actually visualize their neural activation patterns in response to a stimulus... different parts of the brain "light up" different colors depending on things we showed them or ways we asked them to think. The 3D brain images these scanners produce are beautiful pieces of art! But then it was my job to break down each brain into a 3D grid (sort of like a rubiks cube) and each square in the grid was called a "voxel". With fancy statistics, I could compare one of your voxels to the corresponding voxel in someone else's brain.

Why am I telling you all this? Recent research is using this same methodology to show that storytellers and listeners synchronize their neurological paths as a story is told. Storytelling elicits pretty EXTREME empathy.

This week's episode of RadioLab (one my favorite podcasts) does a fun job of exploring this topic without being terribly science-y.

• Podcast [Radiolab] : Are You My Brain Double? (skip to around 4:20 for the meat)

• Another Nerdier Podcast [Speed of Creativity]: Storytelling and Cognitive Neuroscience (skip to around 6:00 for the meat)