Norway – A recent study conducted by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has uncovered the hidden intricacies of handwriting that illuminate the brain in ways digital typing simply cannot match. The study, involving 36 university students, aimed to unravel the mystery behind how the brain responds to the act of writing. As participants were asked to either write in cursive using a digital pen on a touchscreen or type the same words using a keyboard, a sophisticated cap with 256 electrodes recorded their brain waves. The findings were nothing short of remarkable. “Our main finding was that handwriting activates almost the whole brain as compared to typewriting, which hardly activates the brain as such. The brain is not challenged very much when it’s pressing keys on a keyboard as opposed to when it’s forming those letters by hand,” explains Audrey van der Meer, co-author of the study and a neuropsychology professor at NTNU.
