SHAKESPEARE AND NEUROSCIENCE.

SHAKESPEARE AND NEUROSCIENCE. Jonah Lehrer (author of PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST) links here to a report by Phillip Davis on an experiment which measured the brain’s reaction to some Shakespearean language. The experiment measured the effect on the brain of using a word as a different part of speech. (Davis gives examples from Shakespeare: “‘He childed as I fathered’” (nouns shifted to verbs); in “‘Troilus and Cressida’”, “‘Kingdomed Achilles in commotion rages’” (noun converted to adjective); “‘Othello’”, “‘To lip a wanton in a secure couch/And to suppose her chaste!”‘ (noun “‘lip’” to verb; adjective “‘wanton’” to noun).” A change was shown in the electrical activity of the brain, and an effect different from that produced by simple bad grammar. The difficulty of the language creates neural excitement in the brain. Says Davis, “Shakespeare is stretching us.”