What happens to your brain when you read a poem? Science has an answer

Time of India

6 days ago

Credit: Canva
W
e live in an age of doomscrolling, where content has become synonymous with 'reels.' Thanks to relentless swiping, our attention span flickers like candlelight in a windstorm.
Amid this digital deluge, the humble poem stands oddly still, unrushed, unapologetically deep. Yet behind its delicate metaphors and winding verses lies a neurological tempest. Poetry, as it turns out, doesn't merely touch the soul; it tunes the mind.
A growing body of research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that reading poetry can sharpen cognition, ignite flexible thinking, and gently coax the mind out of its mental cul-de-sacs.
The poetry-cognition nexus
At Goldsmiths University, a recent study published in the Creativity Research Journal has added empirical weight to what poets have long intuited. Led by PhD student Soma Chaudhuri and Professor Joydeep Bhattacharya, the study tested whether reading a single poem, Rudyard Kipling's If, a century-old meditation on character and resilience, could impact creative cognition.
Participants were divided into groups and asked to read the poem, rate it, or engage with a non-poetic text of similar length.
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The result? A surge in associative creativity, that elusive ability to connect seemingly unrelated ideas.
Like ivy tracing brick walls, thoughts found unexpected paths to follow.
The gentle power of wandering
Yes, we all have heard that building castles in the air will do no good, or it is not good to count chickens before they hatch. But, what if we say, these built castles can pave the way for your high intellect.
One of the study's most striking insights was this: Those who allowed their minds to drift during poetry reading experienced the greatest benefit.
What we often dismiss as daydreaming, the study suggests, may be a secret key to cognitive flexibility.
Here, the poem becomes a kind of invitation. Not all who wander are lost. Guiding us not toward solutions, but to the fertile grounds where they grow.
Your brain on verse
Meanwhile, at Bangor University, another study added a neuroscientific twist. Welsh-speaking participants were read sentences crafted in the intricate poetic form of Cynghanedd.
Though unfamiliar with the structure, they instinctively responded to it. EEG scans revealed bursts of neural activity, tiny fireworks in the brain triggered by poetic cadence.
There is a rhythm the body remembers even when the mind does not.
Where thought meets feeling
The University of Exeter added a further dimension. Researchers there scanned participants' brains while they read texts ranging from technical prose to lyrical verse. Emotional passages lit up the right brain, where we feel music and memory.
Complex lines activated the left, where we solve puzzles and decode meaning.
And when subjects read their favourite poems, something rare occurred: Regions associated with recognition, not just reading, lit up. The lines weren't processed, they were recalled. The brain treated them like personal truths, not borrowed words.
Some lines don't pass through the eyes. They take root in the chest.
A cognitive tool in disguise
Another study at the University of Liverpool introduced what they called the 'a-ha moment,' those poetic twists that prompt reevaluation of a line's meaning.
Think Wordsworth's solitary maiden, or a sudden revelation in a Frost poem. These moments lit up parts of the brain linked to non-automatic processing, nudging the reader out of habitual thought patterns.
Here, the poem acts not as an answer, but as a mirror turned slightly askew. Suddenly, the familiar becomes strange again.
It's this disruption that makes poetry cognitively powerful. Where prose tells, poetry suggests.
Where speech fills, poetry leaves space.
Applications beyond the page
The implications are both poetic and practical. Professor Bhattacharya suggests poetry be used in schools, not just as art, but as cognitive training, particularly in subjects requiring conceptual leaps. Even in the workplace, he believes, poetry could replace coffee-fueled scrolling during breaks to rejuvenate lateral thinking.
In a time when distraction reigns and attention is currency, poetry demands depth, patience, and presence.
And in doing so, it exercises muscles we didn't know were atrophying.
The final stanza
Emily Dickinson once wrote of the mind being wider than the sky. Neuroscience is only now beginning to catch up to that metaphysical truth. Poetry, long relegated to the edges of utility, may be one of the most quietly transformative tools we possess.
So, when the day dulls and your thoughts clutter like too many tabs on a screen, try reaching not for noise, but for nuance. For rhythm. For resonance.
Because somewhere between metaphor and mind-wandering, poetry might just be the scaffolding on which new thinking is built.
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