Why Do We Read

Literary Critics Scan The Brain To Find Out Why We Love To Read

Apr 12, 2010 Science and Technology

It is the cutting edge of literary studies, a rapidly expanding field that is blending scientific processes with the study of literature and other forms of fiction. Some have dubbed it “the science of reading” and it is shaking up one of the most esoteric and sometimes impenetrable corners of academia. Forget structuralism or even post-structuralist deconstructionism. “Neuro lit crit” is where it’s at.

Later this year a group of 12 students in New England will be given a series of specially designed texts to read. Then they will be loaded into a hospital MRI machine and their brains scanned to map their neurological responses.

The scans produced will measure blood flow to the firing synapses of their brain cells, allowing a united team of scientists and literature professors to study how and why human beings respond to complex fiction such as the works of Marcel Proust, Henry James or Virginia Woolf.

The students are part of a group called the Yale-Haskins Teagle Collegium, which is headed by Yale literature professor Michael Holquist. “We are a group made up of honest-to-God scientists who spend all day in the lab and a group of literary humanists who are deeply devoted to the cause of literature,” Holquist said.

Full article at the Guardian. If they figure out why we read, does that mean I have to change the title of the blog?