Episode 4: Martin Lotze // Neuroscience

Symphony of Synapses

Martin Lotze is a neuroscientist who has put people in MRI scanners and watched their brains write. What did he observe? He explains what he has found out in his laboratory.

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Professor Lotze, you’re a neuroradiologist, so you scan people’s brains while they’re thinking. Do you still write anything by hand for your work?
Absolutely. Although I’d say I draw more than I formulate my thoughts in proper sentences and paragraphs. The fact is that when I start a project, it’s quite difficult for me to structure my thoughts without a pen and paper. I’m a visual thinker, so there’s always an image preceding every lecture or research project. While I envy people who can express neuronal processes mathematically, it’s not something that I can do. I also write all outlines for my texts by hand first. Only once the sketch has been put on paper can I start to think about how to realise it.

Do you have any particular rituals when working on paper? Does it have to be a specific type of paper or pen?
Not at all. When I make these sorts of sketches I use the first pen I find on my desk. Usually they’re promotional ballpoint pens – I don’t have any preferences. As far as the paper goes, I use whatever’s in front of me. 

Is that emblematic of the unpretentious nature of scientists?
I sometimes ask myself if we shouldn’t take care of some things a bit more. But the cliché of the nerdy scientist who gets completely engrossed in his work and neglects formal details such as these absolutely does sum up many people in my field.

"Neuroscience is very much a digitally oriented field. But I tend to return to my sketches. A white sheet of paper contains virtually endless possibilities."

Do you keep all your notes?

Every once in a while I get rid of some sketchbooks when there are simply too many of them. At the moment, I have eleven books at my workplace alone. However, it’s another story when I lose one or leave one somewhere. Then I sometimes mourn it for a week.

Why do you use so many notebooks at the same time?

Because I always need one, but often forget to put it in my bag. So I frequently buy new ones. And when I go on trips my sketchbooks are my companions. I don’t like eating in restaurants by myself, but I often have to do it when I’m travelling. So it helps me to have my book on the table and be drawing at the same time. The book gives me privacy, protects me from other people’s looks and lets me forget about the rest of the world. In that moment I am having a conversation with my thoughts and ideas.

How do you organise your thoughts: moodboards, lists, mindmaps?

(Laughs) Unfortunately I don’t have a system. And even though I always tell myself I’m going to devote a book to just one project, I can’t even manage to do that. I’m often quite disciplined on the first few pages, but then another project comes along and my resolution goes down the drain. Actually, the books are witnesses of my daily routine.

Do you have any writing rituals?

My most important ritual is writing down and sketching out my ideas at night. I often wake up at night with an idea that won’t let me go until I’ve got it down on paper. That’s why there is always a sketchbook on my bedside table.

So that means we strengthen these links when we write by hand?
We’ve seen in experiments that we make long-term changes to our brain when we regularly practise these processes. By practising them, it becomes easier to create new variations that in turn allow for new oscillations. It generates an attention-driven creative flow.

How were these studies designed?
We collaborated with the Creative Writing department at the University of Hildesheim to study students’ brains in an MRI scanner while they wrote different texts by hand. We were able to demonstrate that many parts of the brain were interacting with one another in complex ways during this activity, including both the parts that control motor and sensory function and the ones that control creative thinking and organising. By carrying out comparative studies with participants who did not write regularly at work, we were also able to prove that the brain activities of the creative writing students were linked differently and worked much more efficiently. When we practise something regularly, new paths etch themselves into our brains, and this allows routines and automatisms to develop. In this respect, writing is not very different from playing the piano.

So is it safe to say that writing by hand can help us understand things better?
Yes, it is. In further studies, we found that it’s easier for people to describe the main ideas of a lecture they attended if they take notes by hand. To write by hand is to grasp something in the truest sense of the word.

"The brains of people who write by hand work more creatively and efficiently."

Martin Lotze

Professor Martin Lotze is a neurologist and Professor of Functional Imaging at Greifswald University Hospital. Together with the neurology department there and the Literature Institute at the University of Hildesheim, he conducted a large-scale study in 2014 to investigate brain activity when writing by hand. He had students on the HildesheimCreative Writingdegree programme lie down in an MRI scanner and work on different types of text, enabling him to visualise the regions of the brain that are active during the various tasks.