Why writing, as opposed to reading or speaking?
I find the whole thing so fascinating, things we take for granted and yet when we think about them and question them make so much sense! I got into the understanding between why writing is SO good for our emotional brain and our memory.
Why Handwriting is so good and not Reading or Speaking: What’s the difference?
Handwriting uses our sensorimotor cortex, parietal lobe for deep emotional processing. Here is an explanation on why it wins over Reading and Speaking. It is self-awareness. My favourite topic, the subject that changes our lives!
Reading: Visual cortex, fusiform gyrus—great for inspiration
Speaking: Broca’s area, motor cortex—expresses but less tactile
Handwriting wins for self-awareness due to our sensorimotor cortex, parietal lobe which runs our deep emotional processing.
Yes, reading and speaking do involve some brain areas associated with handwriting (Broca’s area, hippocampus, angular gyrus), but handwriting uniquely engages the sensorimotor cortex and supramarginal gyrus for tactile and spatial processing. These areas, less active in reading or speaking, make handwriting especially effective for processing emotions in journaling, as it creates a physical-emotional bridge that reading (input) and speaking (output) don’t fully replicate.
