The Brain Loves Poetry
Whether it’s “The Eagle” by Alfred Lord Tennyson or “And still I rise” by Maya Angelou, there is something about reading or hearing a fantastic poem that activates our minds, pushing us from a different perspective to explore the world. And that’s no accident, from a neuroscience point of view.
Researchers have used brain imaging (fMRI) and other specialized devices in recent years to research how the human brain responds to poetry. Among other aspects, they have found that the brain appears to be programmed to understand the patterns and rhythms that poets use and separate them from ordinary speech or writing.
They have also discovered that particular regions of the brain are stimulated by considering symbolic imagery and the various levels of meanings in poetry, some of the same areas that allow us to understand our daily life.
The explanation why poetry has such a profound impact on us is that it appears that our minds are designed to understand it. Researchers at the UK’s Bangor University read a set of sentences from a collection of Welsh-speaking subjects in a recently published report in the journal Frontiers of Psychology.
A few of the sentences followed Cynghanedd‘s complex poetic building codes, a common form of Welsh poetry, although other sentences did not obey such rules.
