It turns out that certain words from the magical Harry Potter books do cast a spell on our brains.
According to British scientists, there were “significant correlations” found between brain activity in regions linked with strong emotions in participants reading excerpts from JK Rowling’s books.
Dr Francesca Citron from the University of Lancaster said that the results suggested that a text’s constituting words could predict its emotion potential.
Examples of the texts used included this passage from ‘ Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire,’ which read “Wormtail screamed, screamed as though every nerve in his body was on fire, the screaming filled Harry’s ears as the scar on his forehead seared with pain …”, and another from ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ which read “You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor,’ roared Gaunt, losing control, and his hands closed around his daughter’s throat.
The scans from the magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI ) showed that reading such passages stirred the left amygdala region of the brain that is involved in processing emotional reactions. The more emotionally arousing words a text contained, the bigger the effect that was seen.
