Shakespeare’s effect on brains

From Biology News Net:

Research at the University of Liverpool has found that Shakespearean language excites positive brain activity, adding further drama to the bard’s plays and poetry.

Shakespeare uses a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb.

Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands the function of the word within a sentence.

This process causes a sudden peak in brain activity and forces the brain to work backwards in order to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to say.

Professor Philip Davis, from the University’s School of English, said: “The brain reacts to reading a phrase such as ‘he godded me’ from the tragedy of Coriolanus, in a similar way to putting a jigsaw puzzle together.

If it is easy to see which pieces slot together you become bored of the game, but if the pieces don’t appear to fit, when we know they should, the brain becomes excited.

By throwing odd words into seemingly normal sentences, Shakespeare surprises the brain and catches it off guard in a manner that produces a sudden burst of activity – a sense of drama created out of the simplest of things.”

Experts believe that this heightened brain activity may be one of the reasons why Shakespeare‘s plays have such a dramatic impact on their readers.

Professor Neil Roberts, from the University’s Magnetic Resonance and Image Analysis Research Centre, (MARIARC), explains: “The effect on the brain is a bit like a magic trick; we know what the trick means but not how it happened.

Instead of being confused by this in a negative sense, the brain is positively excited.

The brain signature is relatively uneventful when we understand the meaning of a word but when the word changes the grammar of the whole sentence, brain readings suddenly peak.

The brain is then forced to retrace its thinking process in order to understand what it is supposed to make of this unusual word.”

Shakespeare’s Henry V, Eisenstein, and war: here.

Shakespeare’s The Tempest Then and Now: here.