掃描探測藉以測定大腦想像力激活區域

Brain scans to probe  how books fire imagination

By Paul Harris and Alison Flood THE GUARDIAN, LONDON Tuesday, Apr 13, 2010

‘Neuro lit crit’ is the study of how great writing affects the synapses of the human mind. But can science ever decode /'di'kod/ the artistic impulse?

神經文學評論是一種關於優異寫作如何影響人類心智的神經元突觸之研究，但是科學家真能破解藝術家的神來一筆嗎?

 It is the cutting edge of literary studies, a rapidly expanding field that is blending scientific processes with the study of literature and other forms of fiction. Some have dubbed it “the science of reading” and it is shaking up one of the most esoteric and sometimes impenetrable corners of academia. Forget structuralism or even post-structuralist deconstructionism.  “Neuro lit crit” is where it’s at.

現今最先端的文學研究，一個迅速擴大的領域是融合科學進程與文學的研究和其他形式的小說。有些人甚至稱之為“閱讀科學”，它憾動了一個最深奧的，有時是堅不可摧的學術界角落。忘記結構，甚至後結構主義。 “神經文學評論儼然成形。

 Later this year a group of 12 students in New England will be given a series of specially designed texts to read. Then they will be loaded into a hospital MRI and their brains scanned to map their neurological responses to the words.

今年晚些時候，在新英格蘭有一組 12名學生將授予研讀一系列特別設計的閱讀文本。然後，他們將載上一種醫院核磁共振設備以掃描他們的大腦和定位他們對字詞的神經反應。

The scans produced will measure blood flow to the firing synapses of their brain cells, allowing a united team of scientists and literature professors to study how and why human beings respond to complex fiction

such as the works of Marcel Proust, Henry James or Virginia Woolf.

 

掃描的影像將測量血液流向他們的腦細胞的突觸發射，允許一組科學家聯合小組和文學教授研究人類如何以及為什麼應對如馬塞爾普魯斯特，亨利詹姆斯和弗吉尼亞伍爾夫等諸類複雜小說作品。

 The students are part of a group called the Yale -Haskins Teagle Collegium, which is headed by Yale literature professor Michael Holquist. “We are a group made up of由……組成honest-to-God scientists who spend all day in the lab and a group of literary humanists who are deeply devoted to the cause of literature,” Holquist said.

 學生是一組名為耶魯 -哈斯金斯蒂格爾(管理委員會)合議制集團等，這是耶魯大學文學教授為首的邁克爾霍奎斯特的部份組員。 “我們是一組整天在實驗室對上帝誠實的科學家和一批深深致力於文學事業的文學人道主義者，”holquist說。

His groups have spent months designing their texts, or “vignettes,” and they have been specifically created to different levels of complexity based on the assumption that the brain reacts differently to great literature than to a newspaper or a Harry Potter book. The aim, Holquist says, is to provide a scientific basis for schemes to improve the reading skills of college-age students.

他的小組花了幾個月的設計他們的文字，或“簡介”，他們已經具體地建立不同層次的複雜性基礎上的假設是，大腦對偉大的文學作品比對報紙或哈利波特的書反應不同。這樣做的目的，holquist霍奎斯特說，是為了提供一個科學基礎的依據計劃，以增進大學年齡層學生的閱讀能力。

Holquist’s group, however, is just one area of neuro lit crit. Academics from the arts and science are getting together in cross-disciplinary ways in order to explore the actual biological processes behind reading, creating and processing fiction. “Reading is a very hard-wired thing in our brains. There are brain cells that respond to reading and we can study them,” said Richard Wise, a neuroscientist at Imperial  College London. That might seem a counter-intuitive  way to treat the arts. Great literature — and, indeed, not-so-great literature — has long been examined and studied in terms of other fields of the humanities.

holquist的研究小組，只是神經文學評論的一個區塊。學術，藝術和科學的聚會在跨學科的訓練，用以探討生物過程背後的實際閱讀，創建和處理小說。一個在英國倫敦帝國學院的神經學家“理查德懷斯說:“閱讀在我們的頭腦是一個特殊硬體連線的事情。腦細胞，回應閱讀，我們藉此研讀，。這可能似乎是以反直觀的方式來對待藝術。曠世巨著 – 與實際上，不那麼偉大的文學作品 - 早已長期在其他領域的人文科學被審查和研究。

People have identified philosophical theories in Shakespeare and analyzed his differing moral ways of seeing the world. Famous works of literature have long been interpreted  according to Marxist theories or by looking at gender. Or they have been seen as the product of exact historical, social, economic or environmental contexts.

人們已鑑別出莎士比亞的哲學理論並分析出以他不同的道德方式看待世界。著名的文學作品長期以來早根據馬克思主義理論或性別論被詮釋。或者說，他們已被視為是其確切的歷史，社會，經濟或環境背景的產物。

 

Now, adding to those age-old debates, groups of scientists and literature experts are saying that the biology and chemistry of the brain are equally worthy of study and could provide as much insight. Literature, they say, has its roots in what it does to our brains or even what genes might be involved. Lighting up the right neurons is every bit as important as a keen moral insight or a societal context. Some see that as revolutionary. “It is one of the most exciting developments in intellectual life,” said Blakey Vermeule, an English professor at Stanford University.

現在，加入那些古老的爭論，科學家和文學專家們說，生物和大腦的化學組合也同樣值得研究，可提供很大的啟示(領悟)。他們說，我們的大腦在文學上的運作，有其根源，甚至可能涉及基因之類。激活每一個正確的神經細胞如同一個敏銳的精神頓悟或社會脈絡一樣重要。有些人認為這是革命性的。，一個在斯坦福大學英文教授布萊基 vermeule”說，“在啟智的生活中這是一個最令人興奮的發展。

Vermeule is examining the role of evolution in fiction: some call it “Darwinian literary studies.” It looks at how human genetics and evolutionary theory shape and influence literature, or at how literature itself may be an expression of evolution. For instance, the fact that much of human fiction is about the search for a suitable mate should suggest that evolutionary forces are at play. Others agree that fiction can be seen as promoting social cohesion  or even giving lessons in sexual selection. “It is hard to interpret fiction without an evolutionary view,” said Jonathan Gottschall at Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania.

  vermeule韋爾默朗正在研究小說中的角色的蛻變：有人稱之為“達爾文主義文學研究。”探視人類遺傳學和進化理論如何形成和影響文學，或是文學本身可能是演化的表達。舉例來說，事實上許多的人文小說是關於尋找一個合適的伴侶應該建議，在劇本中演變的力量在起作用。其他的同意小說可以被看作是促進社會凝聚力，或甚至給予性選擇一個教訓。賓夕法尼亞州、華盛頓的杰斐遜戈茨徹爾學院的文學家喬納森高茲夏爾說：“沒有進化觀點的小說是很難詮釋。”

However, there has also been a backlash  against the idea of using scientific methodology  as a way of analyzing fiction. Some say that the very experience of literature is too individual for scientific study. Or that science might do down the artistic and poetic notions of the humanities. Others protest/'prot

ɛst that the science is simply not advanced enough. “It strikes me as just plain silly. The mind and the brain are two quite separate things, and nobody knows what the relation is between them,” said Ian Patterson, a fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Nikolaj Zeuthen, of Aarhus University in Denmark, agreed. “The experience of reading something is subjective, something that we have only private access to. And surely there is nothing electrical, chemical about my experience of reading Woolf. So how can you say anything about my experience by looking at brain imaging?” he said.

不過，也有強烈抵制反對用科學的方法這種想法分析小說。有人說，文學的特別體驗太獨特以致無法使用科學方式來研究。或者說會降低科學的藝術和詩歌的人文理念。(觀念；信念；理解)其他反對者’說，科學根本不夠先進。一個在劍橋皇后學院的同輩；同類伊恩，帕特森說：“這對我顯然是是愚蠢的。心智和大腦是兩個完全獨立的東西，沒有人知道他們之間的關係。”在丹麥的奧胡斯大學的尼古拉措伊滕也同意。 “閱讀的經驗是主觀的東西，這是我們只能私下接觸的過程。在我閱讀伍爾夫的經驗肯定沒有什麼電流，或化學反應。所以你怎麼藉由通過觀察腦部顯影來訴說我的任何經驗？“他說。

But the proponents of neuro lit crit say that the critics are missing the point: discovering the scientific rules behind humankind’s passion for storytelling does not take anything away from aesthetics. “Knowing the science behind the movement of a comet through space does not degrade the beauty of the nighttime sky,” said Gottschall.

但神經文學評論支持者們說，批評家們遺漏了重點：說書者探索人類科學準則背後的人道熱情並未遠離美學。戈茨徹爾說：”“認識彗星穿越時空的科學運動不會降低美麗的夜空”。

Book worms

書蟲

There have been many different theories in the field of literary criticism, not least the emergence of the black turtleneck as preferred garb for any self-respecting lit crit student. One of the giants of the early days was British academic FR Leavis who rose to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s. His works interpreted works of art in isolation from their social context.

在文學批評領域有許多不同的理論，對任何自重的文學評論的學生來說，特尤以墨色高領套頭衫的崛起做為首選的妝扮。在英國的學院李維斯，一個早期的巨擘，在20年代和30年代突顯卓越。他的工作是詮釋從他們社會脈絡孤立的藝術工作。

Other schools have gone in

參加，進入the opposite direction. Marxist and feminist  literary criticism interpret art as a practice placed within a society, its politics, gender relations and economy, and they dominated left-wing faculties in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

其他學校，已加入反對的方向。馬克思主義和女性主義文學批評詮釋的藝術已在社會，政治，性別關係和經濟有一個實際地位，他們在60年代和70年代主宰左翼派系。