The Narrative Brain: The Stories Our Neurons Tell

In this piquant inquiry, Breithaupt (The Dark Sides of Empathy), a cognitive science professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, explores why humans tell stories. He contends that humans are primed to break down experiences into “episodes” because doing so helps the brain more efficiently group and store a sequence of events as a single, discrete incident in memory. Arguing that one core purpose of narratives is to convey emotion, Breithaupt discusses his own research asking participants to retell a simple story in a variation on the game telephone, finding that while the details changed drastically across iterations, the tale’s emotional valence remained constant. The pleasure of experiencing such feelings draws audiences to stories, Breithaupt posits, suggesting, for instance, that when heroes prevail against the odds, audiences feel their triumphs vicariously. Breithaupt asserts that the ability of stories to align audiences’ emotions with those of a protagonist has conferred evolutionary benefits, proposing that when people tell stories about their own feelings, they’re simultaneously guiding listeners as to what kinds of support they need. There’s surprisingly little neuroscience given the subtitle, with Breithaupt instead relying largely on reflection and a handful of his own cognitive studies, but his theories about the functions and rewards of storytelling stimulate. It’s a worthy complement to Leonard Mlodinow’s Emotional. (Feb.)