Close Reading Leads to Superior People

Moneta Sleet Jr./Ebony Collection

My brother Jonathan and my friend Rachel Kranz periodically send me articles on what brain science is telling us about reading literature. It’s generally nothing that we don’t instinctively know already, but it’s nice to have science confirm what poets have been saying for centuries. Here’s the latest.

First of all, Jonathan alerted me to a piece in The Huffington Post on how reading fiction is good for language comprehension and brain connectivity. Dr. Gregory Berns at the Center of Neuropolicy at Emory University conducted a study where researchers scanned the brains of students reading a thriller:

The researchers took fMRI scans of the brains of 21 undergraduate students while they rested. Then the students were asked to read sections of the 2003 thriller novel Pompeii by Robert Harris over nine nights. The students’ brains were scanned each morning following the nightly reading assignment, and then again daily for five days after they had finished the book.

Here’s what was discovered:

The scans revealed heightened connectivity within the students’ brains on the mornings following the assignments, and the changes persisted for the five days after the students had finished the novel. The areas with enhanced connectivity included the students’ left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with language comprehension, as well as in the brain’s central sulcus, which is associated with sensations and movement.

Last October I posted on a study that found different brain results in those reading popular literature and those reading substantive literature, which I suppose would mean that greater connectivity would result from a better novel than Pompeii. But a study sent to me by Rachel makes a further distinction. Apparently it makes a difference whether one simply reads a classic or whether one “close reads” it:

In a recent interdisciplinary collaboration between Stanford neurobiologists and assistant English professor Natalie Phillips, researchers used the Jane Austen classic Mansfield Park to investigate how the type of critical reading taught in most English classes may alter brain activation patterns.

As a longtime literary scholar, Phillips had always been interested in how reading literature could shape how people viewed the world. From anecdotal evidence, at least, it seemed as if the type of critical textual analysis taught in classrooms heightened attention when compared to casual reading. 

To test this theory, Phillips and researchers from the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging used an fMRI machine to scan the brains of 18 participants as they read a chapter from Austen’s Mansfield Park. First, the participants were asked to read the chapter casually, as they would for fun. Then they were asked to switch to close reading, a common term for the type of scrutiny to detail and form required to analyze text in a literary course. To ensure that participants could successfully switch between these two modes of reading, all participants were PhD candidates pursuing literary degrees. 

Researchers observed a significant shift in brain activity patterns as the PhD students went from casual to critical modes. Critical reading increased bloodflow across the brain in general, and specifically to the prefrontal cortex.

The article goes on to note that the prefrontal cortext

is known to play a role in executive function, which refers to a set of higher-order cognitive processes that manage how you divide your attention and coordinate complex activities.

This is where a third article comes in. Responding to a TEDTalk by MIT neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe, Cindy Wigglesworth of The Huffington Post talks about three dimensions of human engagement: cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and this executive founction. She talks first about the two forms of empathy:

Empathy is frequently discussed as involving at least two types: cognitive empathy and emotional (or affective) empathy. Cognitive empathy involves thinking things through to see from the other person’s point of view. It is sometimes called Theory of Mind. If we predict well we can accurately guess what the other person will do, assume or feel…But cognitive empathy is only part of being a good human being. In fact, some psychopaths have good cognitive empathy. It may help them accurately predict how others will react to their manipulations.

Emotional empathy is a much more visceral experience. It includes limbic system resonance where the emotions you are feeling trigger parallel physiological and emotional reactions in me. I am “feeling with” you. Emotional empathy may create the “brake” on our tendency to act from self-interest in aggressive ways. If my aggression is going to hurt you, and your pain is felt in my body, I am likely to pause and perhaps stop or lessen my aggression.

The point about empathy not being enough in itself–about there needing to be an executive function–addresses one of the concerns of a New Yorker article I posted on recently. The author said that if literature only boosted our empathic skills, then it is of dubious usefulness since empathy alone is not automatically a good thing (the point about some psychopaths being very empathetic). But if it were also to help us step into our higher selves, then that concern is at least partially answered. Apparently executive managing occurs in the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ):

What sets a truly noble person apart? What makes a Gandhi, Dalai Lama, or Mother Teresa different? There is a decision made by these people to hold themselves to a higher standard. They make a decision to live up to noble values — to live from their highest nature. In what part of the brain does this ability reside? To my knowledge no one has fully answered this yet. I suspect we will find that the executive decision-making center of the brain, residing in the prefrontal cortex, is involved. I believe our path to nobility will call upon the emotional and logical components of the brain. There will be also a piece of right brain visioning required. I believe there will be some developmental neural “weight-lifting” and whole-brain integration skills. We will have to conceptualize what nobility looks like and then integrate our whole brain to align with that goal. We will then have to make daily choices and take actions so we can live toward that ideal. All this, if true, will mean that the RTPJ will be just one piece in our nobility-machinery.

Literature helping us conceptualize nobility? That sounds good to me. So in addition to enhancing our ability to cognitively and emotionally empathize, reading great literature–and especially closely reading great literature–helps us develop the cognitive means to do such conceptualizing. Reading, in other words, is an important aid to our becoming better people.

But then, you already knew that, right?

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