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Posts Tagged ‘Wash-U’

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warning: reading leads to "vivid mental simulations of narrative situations"

A Wash-U study using magnetic resonance imaging suggests that reading stories is anything but passive: Rather, readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative. Details about actions and sensation are captured from the text and integrated with personal knowledge from past experiences. These data are then run through mental simulations using brain regions that closely mirror those involved when people perform, imagine, or observe similar real-world activities.