When's The Last Time You Wrote By Hand?
Think about the last time you had to remember something important from a meeting. Did you type every word into your laptop, or jot down a few messy notes by hand? Most of us have gotten used to the first option.
It's faster, easier to search later, and lets us capture far more information. But there may be a downside to making note-taking so effortless.
In a recent study1, handwriting and typing produced noticeably different patterns of brain activity. The difference may help explain why putting pen to paper can be useful when you're trying to learn or remember something.
About the study
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology studied 36 university students to see how the brain responds to handwriting compared with typing.
Each participant wore a 256-channel EEG cap, which records electrical activity in the brain, while writing words in cursive with a digital pen or typing those same words on a keyboard.
Rather than simply looking at which parts of the brain were active, researchers examined how different brain areas communicated with one another during each task.
The study builds on broader research into what happens when handwriting is replaced by keyboards, particularly when we're learning.
A newer review of brain imaging research2 similarly found differences in how the brain is engaged during handwriting and typing.
Handwriting got more of the brain talking
When participants wrote by hand, researchers saw more communication between different brain regions than they did when participants typed. This included activity in areas and brain-wave patterns associated with learning and memory.
Why might forming letters by hand make such a difference?
Handwriting is a surprisingly involved physical task. Your hand has to make a different movement for each letter while your eyes follow what you're doing and your brain keeps track of where the pen is on the page.
Typing relies on a much more repetitive movement, regardless of which letter you're pressing.
That combination of movement and visual and sensory information gives the brain more to process. Researchers think this richer experience may help support the processes involved in learning and remembering new information.
There's another piece to the story, too.
Older research comparing handwritten and typed notes3 found that students who wrote by hand performed better on conceptual questions, potentially because they were more likely to process and rephrase information rather than transcribe it word for word.
But a later direct replication did not find the same learning advantage, so this part of the research remains less certain.
The Norwegian study offers a different kind of evidence. Instead of measuring how well people performed on a test, it looked directly at brain activity and found that handwriting involved more communication across brain regions.
That kind of active engagement is also why neurologists emphasize routines that keep the brain working rather than coasting.
Make your notes work harder
You don't need to trade your laptop for a notebook. Instead, consider when handwriting might be most useful, then treat it like any other daily brain habit.
- Write when you want to remember: Try handwriting key points from a meeting, a few ideas from something you're reading, or notes from a presentation.
- Summarize instead of transcribing: If you prefer digital notes, pause before typing and put the main idea into your own words. You'll still get the convenience of a keyboard while adding some of the mental processing involved in actively working with the information.
You can also keep a notebook nearby for journaling, brainstorming, or anything else where you're trying to work through an idea rather than simply record it.
Setting the screen aside for a few minutes doubles as a small step toward more mindful screen time, without giving up your devices.
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The takeaway
Handwriting engages the brain differently from typing, with research showing more communication between brain regions during the act of writing by hand.
It may be a simple tool to reach for when you want to slow down and really process something.
