A novel look at how stories may change the brain

“We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically," says neuroscientist Gregory Berns.

By Carol Clark

Many people can recall reading at least one cherished story that they say changed their life. Now researchers at Emory University have detected what may be biological traces related to this feeling: Actual changes in the brain that linger, at least for a few days, after reading a novel.

Their findings, that reading a novel may cause changes in resting-state connectivity of the brain that persist, were published by the journal Brain Connectivity.

“Stories shape our lives and in some cases help define a person,” says neuroscientist Gregory Berns, lead author of the study and the director of Emory’s Center for Neuropolicy. “We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what they do to it.”

His co-authors included Kristina Blaine and Brandon Pye from the Center for Neuropolicy, and Michael Prietula, professor of information systems and operations management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School.

Neurobiological research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has begun to identify brain networks associated with reading stories. Most previous studies have focused on the cognitive processes involved in short stories, while subjects are actually reading them as they are in the fMRI scanner.

The Emory study focused on the lingering neural effects of reading a narrative. Twenty-one Emory undergraduates participated in the experiment, which was conducted over 19 consecutive days.

The researchers chose the novel "Pompeii" for the experiment, due to its strong narrative and page-turning plot.

All of the study subjects read the same novel, “Pompeii,” a 2003 thriller by Robert Harris that is based on the real-life eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ancient Italy. “The story follows a protagonist, who is outside the city of Pompeii and notices steam and strange things happening around the volcano,” Berns says. “He tries to get back to Pompeii in time to save the woman he loves. Meanwhile, the volcano continues to bubble and nobody in the city recognizes the signs.”

The researchers chose the book due to its page-turning plot. “It depicts true events in a fictional and dramatic way,” Berns says. “It was important to us that the book had a strong narrative line.”

For the first five days, the participants came in each morning for a base-line fMRI scan of their brains in a resting state. Then they were given nine sections of the novel, about 30 pages each, over a nine-day period. They were asked to read the assigned section in the evening, and come in the following morning. After taking a quiz to ensure they had finished the assigned reading, the participants underwent an fMRI scan of their brain in a non-reading, resting state. After completing all nine sections of the novel, the participants returned for five more mornings to undergo additional scans in a resting state.

The results showed heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, on the mornings following the reading assignments. “Even though the participants were not actually reading the novel while they were in the scanner, they retained this heightened connectivity,” Berns says. “We call that a ‘shadow activity,’ almost like a muscle memory.”

Read any mind-altering books lately? Writer Joyce Carol Oates once cited "Alice in Wonderland" as a big influence on her imaginative life.

Heightened connectivity was also seen in the central sulcus of the brain, the primary sensory motor region of the brain. Neurons of this region have been associated with making representations of sensation for the body, a phenomenon known as grounded cognition. Just thinking about running, for instance, can activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running.

“The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist,” Berns says. “We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.”

The neural changes were not just immediate reactions, Berns says, since they persisted the morning after the readings, and for the five days after the participants completed the novel.

“It remains an open question how long these neural changes might last,” Berns says. “But the fact that we’re detecting them over a few days for a randomly assigned novel suggests that your favorite novels could certainly have a bigger and longer-lasting effect on the biology of your brain.”

Credits: Top image by iStockphoto.com. Middle and bottom photos by Carol Clark.

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From novels to neuroscience, a meeting of minds

“Images, Metaphors and the Brain” is the name of one of the many graduate seminars inspired and supported by the Emory Center for Mind, Brain and Culture (CMBC). The seminar was co-taught by Laura Otis, a professor of English who has studied neuroscience, and Krish Sathian, a neurologist who loves literature and the humanities.

The course culminated in a day-long symposium, Metaphors and the Mind, that paired top writers, including Salman Rushdie, with leading neuroscientists, “to talk about the possibilities of language and creativity together,” Otis says.

The CMBC, she adds, is sparking “all kinds of friendships and teaching exchanges between departments that would otherwise be far apart.”

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EPA clean air proposal 'not a war on coal'

Coal-burning plants in the United States emit three percent of the entire world’s greenhouse gases, says Bill Buzbee, an environmental law expert at Emory Law.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed clean-air rules for how new power plants should be regulated. The proposed rules are the most recent, major step after the Supreme Court confirmed that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gases.

“This is not a war on coal. This is the United States taking steps to address climate change, for which the science continues to be overwhelming,” Buzbee says.

“This does matter a lot to the world,” he adds. “If the United States does, in fact, require coal plants to do better, and it’s shown to be viable, probably pressure will be brought to bear around the world for other coal-burning countries to think about doing better as well.”

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A student movement for health insurance outreach

RING executive board (from left to right): Anna Bausum, Dennis Valerstain, Rana Alsiro, Sehe Han, Nick Goodwin, Riana Kahlon, Dana Sand and Ijeoma Okafor. Photo by Stephanie Chan.

By Kimber Williams, Emory Report

The opening day of enrollment for the nation's new Affordable Care Act (ACA) was more harried than usual for Emory senior Nick Goodwin, who faced a personal checklist that seemed daunting, even to him:

Meet with Grady Memorial Hospital officials to discuss ACA launch logistics. Run back to campus for an exam in "Opium to Obamacare" anthropology class. Swing by apartment, change clothes. Race to Norcross to join regional U.S. Health and Human Services reps at a community forum to field questions about the new ACA.

What Goodwin didn't anticipate was the simultaneous launch of a government shutdown that day as Congress argued over appropriations, effectively furloughing some 800,000 federal employees. Instead of a supporting role, Goodwin was suddenly part of the forum's main event, helping lead the discussion on looming health insurance changes.

And so he did, fielding complicated questions from veterans and stay-at-home parents and full-time workers — the insured, the uninsured and the underinsured.

From the man who paid $500-a-month insurance premiums through his employer, yet still had no coverage for his children, to families denied insurance due to pre-existing diseases, that day, Goodwin stood and answered questions until the crowd was satisfied.

For Goodwin, it was a defining moment — the culmination of a journey kick-started by his own curiosity, a desire to reduce economic disparities among those seeking health care, and the need to make a difference.

But what began as a simple idea snowballed, remarkably, into something much bigger, resulting in the creation of RING (Resource and Insurance Navigator Group), a new organization founded by Goodwin and a team of Emory students to train college-aged volunteers in health care outreach that will include educating the public about new insurance options under the ACA. The goal: Create RING chapters on university campuses throughout Georgia, building a network of young advocates who can help link consumers with information about much-needed basic services — helping shape the changing face of health care, one unexpected step at a time.

Read the full story in Emory Report.

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Support mothers to curb the global rise in chronic diseases

By Carol Clark

After decades of studies showing that the chances of a person having a chronic disease in later life can be determined when they are in the womb, it is time to take stronger action, say researchers from Emory University and the University of Southampton in the current issue of Nature.

Rather than primarily focusing on people’s genes, or on their diets and lifestyles in adulthood, “we need a developmental approach to public health” that better supports girls and young women, they write.

The lead author of the commentary article is the late David Barker. He was a visiting professor at Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Southampton in the UK, and a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University.

Barker, who co-taught undergraduate courses at Emory, including one on predicting lifespan health, and served as an adviser to graduate students, was widely considered to be one of the most important clinical epidemiologists of our time. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage last August at 75, after finishing the first draft of the Nature commentary. The article summarizes his life’s work, while also calling for action.

Barker essentially “invented” a new field of medicine, now known as Development Origins of Health and Disease, says Michelle Lampl, a co-author of the Nature article and director of Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health.

“He’s responsible for a paradigm shift in medicine through his focus on the science of health in the womb and the early ages,” says Lampl, an anthropologist who focuses on human growth. “The idea that your first cell has a big influence on your later life sounds unbelievable, and he was criticized horribly when he came up with ‘the Barker hypothesis.’ But he opened the door and profoundly changed the way that we think about health and disease.”

The Nature article cites some staggering statistics: Globally, the prevalence of adult-onset diabetes is expected to double by 2030 and cardiovascular disease is expected to rise by about 35 percent.

“More than 30 years of epidemiological studies using data from several hundred thousand people around the world point to factors during prenatal and early childhood development that contribute to these statistics,” the researchers write.

The biology underlying the developmental origins of health and disease has begun to be better understood, and evidence suggests that women need to start eating healthily well before they become pregnant. Women who are obese, and those whose stores of nutrients mean the supply to their growing fetus is less than optimal, risk having babies with a greater likelihood of suffering diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease or cancer in later life.

Watch a video of David Barker speaking to an Emory human health class last spring:


“People working in public health must support girls and young women with low incomes to feel more in control of their lives and so better able to prioritize healthy eating,” the researchers write. “At the same time, better access to quality food is necessary so that it is easier for people to make better choices. This would improve others’ nutrition and thereby the health of future generations.”

The researchers call for personal empowerment activities accompanied by environmental changes that make it easier for women to make better food choices.

They write: “So far, public health advocates have called for regulation and legislation as a means to improve diets — an increased tax on fatty and sugary foods, for instance. Yet this is unlikely to happen because raising the tax on soft drinks, say, is not in the interests of industry, or of politicians, who are sensitive to industry pressures and to a public who want cheap soft drinks.

“Instead of wagging fingers, we need to generate consensus. Empowering consumers to call for better access to better food will put pressure on both politicians to respond to voters, and on the food industry to please their customers.”

Additional co-authors on the paper are psychologist Mary Barker and developmental biologist Tom Fleming, both from the University of Southhampton.

Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health was founded on Barker’s philosophy of predicting and supporting health, instead of just treating disease, Lampl says. “We will continue to build on this legacy, with our focus on empowering young people to make better personal health choices and preparing them to make the next generation of real breakthroughs in human health.”

Photos by iStockphoto.com.

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