Stories and the Brain by Paul B Armstrong

Stories and the Brain by Paul B Armstrong

This book explains how the brain interacts with the social world—and why stories matter. How do our brains enable us to tell and follow stories? And how do stories affect our minds? In Stories and the Brain, Paul B. Armstrong analyzes the cognitive processes involved in constructing and exchanging stories, exploring their role in the neurobiology of mental functioning. Armstrong argues that the ways in which stories order events in time, imitate actions, and relate our experiences to others' lives are correlated to cortical processes of temporal binding, the circuit between action and perception, and the mirroring operations underlying embodied intersubjectivity. He reveals how recent neuroscientific findings about how the brain works—how it assembles neuronal syntheses without a central controller—illuminate cognitive processes involving time, action, and self-other relations that are central to narrative. An extension of his previous book, How Literature Plays with the Brain, this new study applies Armstrong's analysis of the cognitive value of aesthetic harmony and dissonance to narrative. Armstrong explains how narratives help the brain negotiate the neverending conflict between its need for pattern, synthesis, and constancy and its need for flexibility, adaptability, and openness to change. The neuroscience of these interactions is part of the reason stories give shape to our lives even as our lives give rise to stories. Taking up the age-old question of what our ability to tell stories reveals about language and the mind, this truly interdisciplinary project should be of interest to humanists and cognitive scientists alike.

Stories and the Brain is a well-researched, engaging discussion on what narrative theory and neuroscience stand to gain from continued collaboration
—Cerebrum

Paul B. Armstrong is a professor of English at Brown University. He is the author of How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art and Play and the Politics of Reading: The Social Uses of Modernist Form.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781421437750
ISBN 10	1421437759
Title	Stories and the Brain
Author	Paul B Armstrong
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Johns Hopkins University Press
Year published	2020-07-21
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.