14:59
It's unfortunate but true, and probably due to our tech-driven, scientifically orientated world, that when I tell people I write poetry for a living, I'm likely to hear the question, "But what's it for? What does it do?" And that's a puzzler when it comes to literature and poetry. To those of us who love it, it's perfectly obvious what it's "for."
There are specific activities that may stimulate the right or left brain.Activities that stimulate the left brain are solving crossword or word search puzzles, performance of learned tasks, language usage, both comprehensive and expressive, analytical information, problem solving, and recalling new information. Geometric or spatial memory, hand gestures, writing one's name, classifications of pictures or words into categories, recalling complex narratives, recognizing someone you have met, and name recognition are also all left brain activities.
Activities that stimulate the right brain are emotional issues, the creative process, recalling memorized lists, any unfamiliar event or activity, and holding the attention span. Seeing or feeling different sizes, seeing different colors, attention exercises involving timing, seeing unfamiliar faces, and meeting someone new also stimulate the right brain..
Neuroscientists are now learning that, although some things can be fairly well localized, like motor function, our intellectual abilities are quite a bit more complex. For instance, did you know that your ability to speak is stored somewhere completely different from your ability to sing? There are documented cases of people who have become aphasic (unable to speak at all) but who can communicate well if they just SING the words out!
Our memories, our verbal skills and our understanding of meaning are spread through different areas of our brains, a complex network that we draw on without even - well - thinking! And this is where poetry finds a remarkable niche. Why do children memorize far more easily when they are given information in rhyme? Why do YOU still remember songs and poems that you learned when you were small? You probably even still use some of those mnemonics, and you're definitely passing them on to your own children, helping them to learn nursery rhymes and the letters of the alphabet that way.
And beyond the obvious aid to memory, poetry also offers an enhanced understanding of language. It forces our brains to think laterally, to join together different sensory impressions and associations. That kind of layered thinking has been shown, in live MRI tests, to wake up multiple areas of the brain at once. For kids who struggle with language skills, poetry offers an engaging, memorable stealth technology, a way of getting past the brain's standard verbal filters to a deeper language network.
It would seem that our brains have been programmed for this kind of thinking since before anyone even thought of writing anything down. After all, how are you going to pass down the tribe's history to the next generation, unless you turn it into an epic song or poem that people can remember, one verse at a time? Entire moral codes and genealogies were passed on in this manner until came up with the written word, and though we can now access all kinds of words on the internet with a flick of a mouse button, our brains still crave the stimulus that poetry gives, especially when it's spoken out loud.
Visual stimulation from the left side in a checkerboard pattern using different colors comes up through the optic pathway to the brain stem and up to the right brain. The T.E.N.S. unit set at subthreshold stimulates large diameter nerves which fire up to the cerebellum and to the opposite brain.
There are specific activities that may stimulate the right or left brain.Activities that stimulate the left brain are solving crossword or word search puzzles, performance of learned tasks, language usage, both comprehensive and expressive, analytical information, problem solving, and recalling new information. Geometric or spatial memory, hand gestures, writing one's name, classifications of pictures or words into categories, recalling complex narratives, recognizing someone you have met, and name recognition are also all left brain activities.
Activities that stimulate the right brain are emotional issues, the creative process, recalling memorized lists, any unfamiliar event or activity, and holding the attention span. Seeing or feeling different sizes, seeing different colors, attention exercises involving timing, seeing unfamiliar faces, and meeting someone new also stimulate the right brain..
Neuroscientists are now learning that, although some things can be fairly well localized, like motor function, our intellectual abilities are quite a bit more complex. For instance, did you know that your ability to speak is stored somewhere completely different from your ability to sing? There are documented cases of people who have become aphasic (unable to speak at all) but who can communicate well if they just SING the words out!
Our memories, our verbal skills and our understanding of meaning are spread through different areas of our brains, a complex network that we draw on without even - well - thinking! And this is where poetry finds a remarkable niche. Why do children memorize far more easily when they are given information in rhyme? Why do YOU still remember songs and poems that you learned when you were small? You probably even still use some of those mnemonics, and you're definitely passing them on to your own children, helping them to learn nursery rhymes and the letters of the alphabet that way.
And beyond the obvious aid to memory, poetry also offers an enhanced understanding of language. It forces our brains to think laterally, to join together different sensory impressions and associations. That kind of layered thinking has been shown, in live MRI tests, to wake up multiple areas of the brain at once. For kids who struggle with language skills, poetry offers an engaging, memorable stealth technology, a way of getting past the brain's standard verbal filters to a deeper language network.
It would seem that our brains have been programmed for this kind of thinking since before anyone even thought of writing anything down. After all, how are you going to pass down the tribe's history to the next generation, unless you turn it into an epic song or poem that people can remember, one verse at a time? Entire moral codes and genealogies were passed on in this manner until came up with the written word, and though we can now access all kinds of words on the internet with a flick of a mouse button, our brains still crave the stimulus that poetry gives, especially when it's spoken out loud.
Visual stimulation from the left side in a checkerboard pattern using different colors comes up through the optic pathway to the brain stem and up to the right brain. The T.E.N.S. unit set at subthreshold stimulates large diameter nerves which fire up to the cerebellum and to the opposite brain.
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