Flux Theatre Ensemble

I've been writing about Presence on the blog for some time, trying to understand the power of the connection between actor and audience evolving in real time. I've been looking to neuroscience for at least a metaphorical grasp about what might be driving this unique pleasure, considering such ideas of Quantum Darwinism and Mirror Neurons, wondering what impact it might have on Casting Our Audiences and Thinking About Diversity.

Now Livia Blackburne on A Brain Scientist's Take On Writing looks at the impact of storytelling on the brains of both the teller and listeners. It supports some of the ideas I was exploring above, and furthers them with this fascinating discovery:

Some regions in the listener's brain actually predicted the speaker's activity, as if the listener was anticipating parts of the story. Later tests of listener comprehension support this. The more predictive activity in a listener’s brain, the better she scored on comprehension questions after the experiment.

The delight of anticipating the twists of a particular plot is something we've all felt; here, the research catches it actually happening in our brains, and reveals that those with the greatest anticipation - those on the edge of their neuro-seats - have the greatest comprehension when the story is done.

All my favorite plays have created these vivid expectations in my mind; and that special thrill of a plot's maneuvering - sometimes evading, sometimes rewarding - around those expectations is a unique thrill of theatre unfolding in real time, with our responses to those maneuvers feeding back to the teller and changing the telling.

Cool stuff to think about on a Tuesday afternoon... Read the full story

Previously on this blog we looked at VS Ramachandran's 2007 talk on mirror neurons and phantom limbs. In that post, I imagined how the mirror effects that heals phantom limb syndrome might possibly extend to harmful emotional patterns in the mind of greater complexity, and that theatre, through its use of empathy, could heal these patterns in a similar way.

Well, in November of last year, Ramachandran upped the ante on us big time. NOW, VS says that if it wasn't for our bodies telling us constantly that we are separate creatures, there would be no difference between our experience of our own actions, and the experience of watching the actions of someone else.

Here's the video - watch it.

The ideas are revolutionary enough to need excerpting here:

"So, here again you have neurons which are enrolled in empathy. Now, the question then arises: If I simply watch another person being touched, why do I not get confused and literally feel that touch sensation merely by watching somebody being touched? I mean, I empathize with that person but I don't literally feel the touch. Well, that's because you've got receptors in your skin, touch and pain receptors, going back into your brain and saying don't worry, you're not being touched...

But if you remove the arm, you simply anesthetize my arm, so you put an injection into my arm, anesthetize the brachial plexus, so the arm is numb, and there is no sensations coming in, if I now watch you being touched, I literally feel it in my hand. In other words, you have dissolved the barrier between you and other human beings. So, I call them Gandhi neurons, or empathy neurons.

And this is not in some abstract metaphorical sense, all that's separating you from him, from the other person, is your skin. Remove the skin, you experience that person's touch in your mind. You've dissolved the barrier between you and other human beings. And this, of course is the basis of much of Eastern philosophy, And that is there is no real independent self, aloof from other human beings, inspecting the world, inspecting other people. You are in fact, connected not just via Facebook, and Internet, you're actually quite literally connected by your neurons. And there is whole chains of neurons around this room, talking to each other. And there is no real distinctiveness of your consciousness from somebody else's consciousness.

And this is not mumbo-jumbo philosophy. It emerges from our understanding of basic neuroscience."

What theatre can do is push us to the very limits of this dissolved barrier, to feel absolutely the experience of another human being as our own, while still maintaining the skin of our individuality. Read the full story