Reasons Why Storytelling is a Powerful Way to Activate Our Brain

Storytelling is Often Used in Marketing

Telling a story is a common tool used to convince customers to make a purchase. Customer rarely question this. Even used in several TV commercials and viral videos on social media, stories find a wider audience than mere advertisements. Storytelling makes an emotional appeal and wins over the audience.

Storytelling Activates More Areas in Our Brain

While listening to a presentation, we hardly pay attention to the bullet points or facts; it makes us sleepy instead. As we hear the presentation, only two areas in our brain, called Broca's area and Wernicke's area, are activated, which basically help us derive meaning. Whereas, if the same thing is told in a story format (probably including a mention of smell, shape, color, or a specific action), it activates the sensory cortex, frontal cortex, and motor cortex too.

Storytelling Lets the Listener Experience Ideas

When some information is told through a story, it is comprehended better. Besides being interesting and memorable, it allows the listener to transform the ideas told through the story into his/her own experiences (neural coupling). Thus, no human will ever have exactly the same learning from a given story, which makes storytelling the best way of activating our brain.

Stories are Interesting, Rest is Boring

A fact sheet, reasoning, or presentation seems boring to every human. Storytelling, on the contrary, asks involvement of the listeners from the first line itself. It puts their mind in the place of the characters being described. The storyteller's ideas are thus easily planted in the listener's mind. That is also why storytelling is key to successful leadership.

Storytelling is an Old Way of Communication

It is a medium being used since centuries. All the cultural or mythological ethos that exists in various communities today have traversed across generations via oral communication. Cave paintings and pictorial representations on ancient structures exemplify the power of storytelling; also proving why our brain loves good storytelling.