According to Sarah Knapton from The Telgraph, neuroscientists have discovered that the same cognitive and emotional parts of the brain are stimulated whether a person hears words, or reads them on a page… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!
Dr Fatma Deniz, a researcher in neuroscience says: “At a time when more people are absorbing information via audiobooks, podcasts and even audio texts, our study shows that, whether they’re listening to or reading the same materials, they are processing semantic information similarly.
“We knew that a few brain regions were activated similarly when you hear a word and read the same word, but I was not expecting such strong similarities in the meaning representation across a large network of brain regions in both these sensory modalities.”
Language is a complex process that involves many regions of the brain, and it was previously thought the brain dealt with spoken and written information differently.
For the study, nine volunteers listened to stories from ‘The Moth Radio Hour,’ a popular podcast broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in which people read out true stories. The study participants were then asked to read the same stories.
Read full post on The Telegraph