TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Jarkko Hurme 2 PASTIME STORIES

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TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Jarkko Hurme
2 PASTIME STORIES
Stories are an essential part of our society and culture. Their influence can be seen in all aspects of our life, be it in our work or in our free time, stories are all around us. They affect our culture, entertainment, art and even news media.
Although the methods of telling stories has evolved, the desire to tell and experience stories has remained unchanged, and still has an impact on the audience, be it emotional, educational, or both. But why is that?
As stated in the article by Professor Paul J. Zak there is a neuroscientific reason for the behavior (Zak 2014). When we are being told a story, not only the language processing parts of our brain become activated but all the other related areas in our brain that are related to the events of the story become active as well. If someone tells us how delicious certain foods are, the sensory cortex becomes activated (Murphy Paul 2012). For this reason it is possible to affect the thoughts and emotions of the receiver of the story.
The logical explanation why the format of the story, where events unfold one after another, has such an impact on our brain is because a story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. This cause and effect relationship is similar to how our brain processes all information.
(Sapolsky 2010).
When the individual experiences a story, they relate it to one of their own existing experiences thus activating the part of the brain that is called insula, which aids us to relate to similar experiences for example to feel sorrow or joy depending on the story, which is displayed in figure 1.

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TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES THESIS | Jarkko Hurme
Freetime
Dentist
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