The Science of Writing
The thinking is the Exercise
A Journal doesn’t simply hold your thoughts. It gives you a place to work with them. When you write, your brain is doing far more than recording words. It is remembering, organizing, interpreting, questioning, connecting, and reconsidering.
Research in neuroscience and psychology is helping us understand why something as simple as putting thoughts into words can have a meaningful effects on the way we think, learn, process emotions, and understand ourselves.
There is no magic in the paper. The work is happening in you.
What Happens in Your Brain When You Write?
Writing is not a passive activity. To turn a thought into words, your brain has to coordinate attention, memory, language, movement, sensory information, and meaning. When you write by hand, that process becomes even more physically involved as the brain coordinates the fine movements required to form each letter.
Than means something important: Writing doesn’t simply capture a thought. Writing requires thought.
OTHER GREAT RESOURCES
Research Spotlight
Handwriting & Brain Connectivity
Audrey Van der Meer and Ruud van der Weel
They used high density EEG recordings to compare brain activity while university students wrote by hand versus typed. The researchers found that handwriting produced more elaborate patterns of brain connectivity than typing. Particularly across areas associated with learning and memory.
In plain English: When you physically write something down, your brain isn’t just receiving information. It’s participating in creating it.
The thinking is the exercise.