Neuroscience Sheds Light on Audio THEATRE’S Ability for Audience Engagement

Image: Brain Viewer by Alexander Huth. Click the image to go to the brain viewer.

written by Reed Leventis - July 2, 2020

A recent paper in Nature, titled “Natural Speech Reveals the Semantic Maps that Tile Human Cerebral Cortex,” explains how, neurologically and psychologically, the medium of audio theatre inherently engages its listeners. By monitoring brain activity through fMRI, researchers found how subjects interact with these “spoken narrative stories.” The authors observed that auditory stimulation in particular activates a wide variety of sections within the brain, allowing for audience members to make connections between what they are listening to and their own experiences. The paper calls these areas of activation ‘semantic maps,’ where different parts of the brain are activated based off of a single subject or concept. In this specific study, they used episodes of “The Moth” where listeners were told first-hand passionate, emotional, and personal stories. These narratives activated a variety of visual, emotional, and tactile semantic maps. In The New York Times article titled “This is Your Brain on Podcasts,” psychology professor and lead researcher Jack L. Gallant provides an explanation for why this form of auditory stimulation works so effectively by breaking it down simply: “Consider the case of just the word ‘dog’” he said, “Hearing that is going to make you think about how a dog looks, how it smells, how the fur feels, the dog you had as a kid, a dog that bit you on your paper route. It’s going to activate the entire network for ‘dog.’” 

With this new research, we can further appreciate audio drama’s innate engagement with its audience's personal experience and understand why this generations-old form of virtual theatre has had such lasting power. It biologically invites the listener into an intimate relationship with the story.