The Broom and the Door Frame (Ep. 5)

How the brain deals with stories

She saw the broom resting against the door frame, in the same spot where she had left it in the earlier haste. The dust still hadn't settled.

The broom and the door frame were the only things left standing. Nothing else had survived. All that remained of the house was rubble—and that lonely door frame with only a battered broom to keep it company. Somehow, they had survived the bombing unscathed.

This is a true story—I think. It's a story my grandmother told us often about her neighbour's house a few doors up from hers that didn't survive one of the many air raids during the war.

I knew the street well since my grandmother lived there all her life. My real memories of the street are from many decades after this incident, with all the houses intact. But I have a 'vivid' image of this broom resting against the door frame, standing amid the rubble of the bombed house.

Ever since childhood, I read countless historical texts about the effects of the war on towns, cities, and societies. But it's this image, which I've never seen in real life, that gives me the clearest perspective of what the war was like for the people living through it.

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You have a brain • Research using fMRI has been looking at differences in the brain when listening to stories or other non-narrative texts. When you read technical or analytical writing, the most active parts of your brain are the regions associated with language and comprehension.

But when you read a story, other parts of the brain also have increased activity. The brain creates a mental model as if you're actually experiencing the events in the story.

Whenever my grandmother told me the story about the broom and the door frame in the rubble from the air raid, my brain 'created' an image of it. Possibly, it also 'heard' the air raid sirens and 'felt' the mixture of fear, bravery, and stoicism of the people as they made their way to the shelters and then emerged to see if they still had a home to go to. These sensations make the scene more 'real'.

The same responses were not triggered when I read history books with facts about how many bombs were dropped and how many houses were destroyed. Yes, my brain's language and comprehension regions ensured I understood the facts, but those texts didn't evoke the visions, sounds, and feelings.

This difference matters.

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Not all stories are stories • Surely, this doesn't apply to less emotive topics such as the technical subjects we write about, right?

But not all stories need to be high on emotions to be useful. And we don't need full stories, either. Studies found that even a single phrase or a sentence can trigger the reader to 'see', 'hear', 'smell' or 'feel'. These additional stimuli can provide an aid that helps the reader understand the concept. And they're also more likely to remember it.

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Einstein's train • Let's take Einstein's train as an example. One of the results of the special theory of relativity deals with simultaneous events. Here's the explanation:

Say there are two events occurring at different locations. Whether these events are simultaneous is not an absolute fact, but it depends on the observer's frame of reference. Two events may appear simultaneous for one person but not for another.

It's unlikely the last paragraph evoked any clear images to help you understand the concept. And let's face it, it's not a straightforward concept to grasp.

But now, imagine a train travelling at high speed. I'm standing in the middle of the train. You're standing on the platform in the station. The instant we're level with each other, a bright light flashes at the centre of the train.

Since I'm also standing in the middle of the train, I'll see these flashes travel away from me at the same speed, the speed of light. I 'observe' the flashes reaching each end of the train at the same time.

But you observe something different. Since the train is moving forward at high speed and you're standing on the stationary platform, the flash travelling towards the back of the train will appear to get there before the one heading to the front of the train.

Now you have a visual image of this 'story'. You pictured the moving train, the two observers, and the flash of light. Your brain creates more information from this story which helps you understand the concept.

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Afterword • I've been reading more and more about the research studies relating to narration and storytelling. There's been an increase in studies in this field over the past decade or so. Give me a bit more time and I'll share what I find. I'll need to find the right format for this. The last thing I want to do is to write something that sounds like a literature review in a paper—for your sake and, more importantly, mine.

Here's a short taster. Just now, I was reading about a study which looked at the difference between reading "Jane gave her Dad a kitten" and "Jane gave a kitten to her Dad". The way the brain forms a mental image is different for these two sentences.

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