Analysis Of Annie Murphy's Article, Your Brain On Fiction

Is it possible to learn from a reality that is not real? A person has an experience that is not real, but believes it to be real. Can that person reach the same conclusions and learn the same lessons from that false experience as from an equivalent real experience? Does the human mind perceive false realities any differently compared to the true reality lived out every day? Even though a moment in time or a series of events may be imagined or made up, people learn lessons and react to these phenomena in ways that are very similar to how they would react if the events actually occurred. Most people have had the experience of being awakened in the middle of the night from a dream that they thought was real. Despite the fact that the dream is not reality, it still affects the mind in real ways and it can still provide lessons much like a real life experience does. In an article for
She describes areas of the brain, such as Broca’s and Wernicke’s that are responsible for interpreting language. Additionally, she explores how narratives stimulate other areas of the brain not traditionally associated with language recognition. The research Murphy discusses in her article points out that metaphors were able to engage the sensory regions of the brain, whereas normal, less colorful, phrases did not. The brain instead treated the less colorful phrases as nothing more than mere words. Murphy also writes that, “words describing motion also stimulate regions of the brain distinct from language-processing areas.” (Murphy Paul, 2). Scans of the brains of subjects involved in the research revealed that words dealing with actions fired up activity in the brain’s motor cortex, the area in charge of the movement of the body. From the research that was done it becomes clear that the brain does not perceive language as merely language, but something more