Researcher ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1461-8410
Graduation Year
2022
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Neuroscience
Second Department
W.M. Keck Science Department
Reader 1
Brian Duistermars
Reader 2
Glenn Simshaw
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
2022 Isabelle G Antolin
Abstract
James Baldwin wrote, “When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know” (as cited in Plimpton 1989). Writers, like James Baldwin, have for a long time acknowledged that writing has some psychological effect. However, the neural basis of this effect has yet to be understood. Neuroimaging studies have examined writing as a creative process, identifying a predominantly left fronto-parieto-temporal network activation during writing tasks (including brainstorming, drafting, and revising). Importantly, one study examining poetry composition found that a generative phase of writing was associated with a significant anti-correlative activation pattern between the dorsal attention network (DAN) and the default mode network (DMN). Additionally, during revision this anti-correlation was attenuated, indicating that different writing tasks require a modulation of the top-down attentional control provided by the DAN. To unify these neuroimaging findings, I suggest that writing in a naturalistic environment requires the continual balance in activation of these two networks to find the optimal brain state for the given writing task. To my knowledge, these neuroimaging findings of writing as a creative process have yet to be extended to writing as a psychological intervention. Thus, I analyze my proposed model for writing in the context of Pennebaker’s (1997) psychological intervention, expressive writing, and its proposed mechanisms of action. I argue that the positive psychological effects associated with expressive writing are facilitated by the continual modulation between the DAN and DMN to find the optimal balance required of writing.
Recommended Citation
Antolin, Isabelle, "The Writing Brain: Writing as an Exercise of Functional Network Optimization to Facilitate Psychologically Healing Effects" (2022). Scripps Senior Theses. 1999.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1999
