Inside the Writer’s Brain
What happens inside the writer’s brain? Is there a direct link between what a writer feels and the words that spill out onto the page? Is there any correlation between what happens inside the writer’s brain and what the reader experiences based on the writer’s words?
These questions are not new. As I noted in a recent blog, the expression theory of art argues that there must be some degree of resonance between the writer and the reader if the book is to be considered art. But much of the discussion over past century has been from a philosophical perspective, looking at what ought to be, rather than what is. Until recently, there has been no way to document what was inside the writer’s brain or the reader’s brain, let alone how similar they were.
In the last ten years, however, the expression theory has taken on an empirical dimension. With the emergence of the field of neuroesthetics, researchers can use an array of sensors and cameras to monitor the brain waves, heart rate, skin condition and facial expressions of both writers and readers.
Testing the Theory
One of the first guinea pigs for this new brain imaging technology is Dutch novelist Arnon Grunberg, who is completing a work of fiction. While he writes, Grunberg wears a plastic cap fitted out with electrodes. As part of the experiment, Grunberg tries to limit each section of his writing to one dominant emotion. The sensors and cameras, developed in the Netherlands, track his cursor and can match what he has written with his physiological and neurological data.
Gathering data on Grunberg’s process of writing is only the beginning. When his novella is published in 2014, fifty readers who agree to use an e-reader under laboratory conditions will face the same array of sensors and cameras.
According to a recent New York Times article, the Dutch researchers will then scour the data, looking for “patterns that may help illuminate links between the way art is created and enjoyed, and possibly the nature of creativity itself.”
“Will readers of Arnon’s text feel they understand or embody the same emotions he had while he was writing it, or is reading a completely different process?” said Ysbrand van der Werf, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam.
I, for one, can’t wait to see what the researchers learn from this study. As a writer of a soon-to-be-published novel, I definitely want my readers to resonate with the experiences and emotional responses of my characters. But many of my readers will come from a cultural, educational and/or economic background different from mine. Why would I expect them to feel exactly the same emotions I did while writing?
And does it even matter?
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