{"id":8437,"date":"2019-09-10T01:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=8437"},"modified":"2019-08-30T19:28:58","modified_gmt":"2019-08-31T02:28:58","slug":"the-neurological-impact-of-sensory-detail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/the-neurological-impact-of-sensory-detail\/","title":{"rendered":"The neurological impact of sensory detail."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><em>Stories\nshould be aimed not at our heads but at our hearts.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd this is\nwhere things get interesting, because description actually allows access to our\nhearts in a neurophysical way.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have\nwondered why reading something with sensory detail leaves more of an impression\nthan writing that doesn\u2019t have sensory detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"134\" height=\"128\" src=\"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Brain-on-fire.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8438\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>According to\nstudies, \u201cwhen we read about an odor, it engages the exact same part of the\nbrain as actually smelling it, and those parts of the brain reside in the lower\nregion, alongside our emotional centers. . . When you write using smells, or\nimages, or sensations, you\u2019re actually gaining access to the emotional area of\nthe brain, and this is why stories can take such precise aim at the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Words like\nlavender, cinnamon, and soap, for example, elicit a response not only from the language\nprocessing areas of our brain, but also those devoted to dealing with smells. The\nbrain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an\nexperience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same\nneurological regions are stimulated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Excerpted\nfrom \u201cThe Heart and the Eye: How Description Can Access Emotion,\u201d by J. T.\nBushnell, Jan\/Feb 2013. Poets &amp; Writers Magazine<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>J. T. Bushnell applies neurophysics to effective writing, shedding light on how strong description gains access to the emotional area of the brain.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stories should be aimed not at our heads but at our hearts. \u201cAnd this is where things get interesting, because description actually allows access to our hearts in a neurophysical way.\u201d I have wondered why reading something with sensory detail leaves more of an impression than writing that doesn\u2019t have sensory detail. According to studies, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1201],"class_list":["post-8437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotes-of-inspiration","tag-j-t-bushnell"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-2c5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8437"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8440,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8437\/revisions\/8440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}