Susan Magsamen

Susan Magsamen is a researcher whose work centers on neuroaesthetics, neuroscience, and public health. Her published research examines the impact of arts- and music-based interventions on mental health, trauma recovery, and youth well-being. She has also authored papers on translating neuroscience into educational practices and the effects of environmental settings on psychedelic therapies.

9 claims checked on air: 1 context 3 overstated 4 supported 1 unverified

What they said on air - unverified

0:33:40unverifiedvery lowYour Brain on Art: The Science of Creativity and Neurologica

Poetry activates sound-processing brain regions independently of semantic word comprehension to a greater degree than prose or fiction.

"They're really more around sound and the way like the difference between how we process sound like rock and stone, right? They're so highly visual and we see something very very different when we're using those that those different words and they resonate in a way that, you know, from a sound perspective, separate from understanding word meaning. And that happens through poetry more than it does through um fiction or creative nonfiction." (said at 0:33:40)

No published record matching the claim that poetry activates sound-processing brain regions independently of semantic word comprehension to a greater degree than fiction or prose was located; this does not prove the claim false. While neuroimaging studies have examined neural responses to the sound of words (PMID: 29789504) and neural activation differences between reading poetry versus prose (PMID: 26409018, PMID: 30186210), none of these studies demonstrate that poetry specifically activates sound-processing auditory regions independently of semantic word meaning to a greater extent than fiction or prose.

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