This is your brain on Story

FoolishPeople tell stories. Whether that be immersive theatre, film, or transmedia in nature, we're all about bringing you into strange and wonderful worlds.

Storytelling is an ancient art, and theatre is not far behind. Film and the magic of the silver screen is part of that; there is a unifying thread that brings us all together, to get involved, and to share experiences. We've known that since time immemorial. Festivals bring us together too, marking time and helping us to make sense of things, to extract meaning and understanding from existence.

So is it any wonder that the march of scientific research is catching up with what humanity already knows?

"Hasson also looked at listening comprehension.  He found that the more the listeners understood the story, the more their brain activity dovetailed with the speaker's.  When you listen to stories and understand them, you experience the exact same brain pattern as the person telling the story.

[...]

When you tell a story to a friend, you can transfer experiences directly to their brain.  They feel what you feel.  They empathize.  What's more, when communicating most effectively, you can get a group of people's brains to synchronize their activity.  As you relate someone's desires through a story, they become the desires of the audience.  When trouble develops, they gasp in unison, and when desires are fulfilled they smile together." 

Who knows what else we'll discover, as we journey on together?

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