Bloggers, Take Note: The Pen Is LOTS Mightier Than....

...The Keyboard when it comes to MEMORY.

Here's proof:

Pen Mightier Than Keyboard for Making Imprint on Brain
The act of handwriting activates brain regions that help boost recall, researchers find
URL of this page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_108033.html (*this news item will not be available after 04/24/2011)

By Alan Mozes
Monday, January 24, 2011 HealthDay Logo
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* Memory

MONDAY, Jan. 24 (HealthDay News) -- As keyboards increasingly replace pens, new research cautions that the switch may come with an unforeseen price: the loss of critical brain activity central to learning that is uniquely tied to the old-fashioned act of handwriting.

The concern stems from the results of a number of experiments recently reviewed by a pair of researchers in France and Norway, who concluded that writing by hand is actually a very different sensory experience than typing on a keyboard, with each activating distinctly different parts of the brain.

"Our bodies are designed to interact with the world which surrounds us," co-author associate professor Anne Mangen from the University of Stavangers Reading Centre in Stavanger, Norway, said in a university news release. "We are living creatures, geared toward using physical objects -- be it a book, a keyboard or a pen -- to perform certain tasks."

This is evidenced, she said, in tests that reveal that the act of handwriting -- literally the feeling of touching a pen to paper -- appears to imprint a "motor memory" in the sensorimotor region of the brain.

In turn, this process promotes the visual recognition of letters and words, suggesting that the two seemingly separate acts of reading and writing are, in fact, linked, Mangen explained.

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