Typing may be faster than writing by hand, but it’s less stimulating for the brain, according to research published Friday in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology determined that handwriting can improve learning and memory after recording the brain activity of 36 college students.
At the beginning of the experiment, students were told to either handwrite words on the touch screen using a digital pen or type the same words using the keyboard. When a word like “forest” or “hedgehog” appeared on the screen in front of them, they had 25 seconds to type or type it over and over again.
Meanwhile, sensors on their heads measured their brain waves. The headset’s 256 electrodes were attached to the scalp and recorded electrical signals in the students’ brains, including where brain cells were active and how parts of the brain communicated with each other.
“Our main finding was that handwriting activates almost the entire brain, compared to typewriting, which activates almost the entire brain,” said Audrey van der Meer, co-author of the study and professor of neuropsychology at NTNU. “The brain does not have as much difficulty pressing the keys on the keyboard, as opposed to forming letters by hand.” ” said.
Specifically, the study found that writing by hand requires communication between the brain’s visual, sensory and motor cortices. Digital pen writers had to visualize the letters, then use their fine motor skills to control their movements as they wrote.
“When you have to form letters by hand, ‘A’ will look completely different than ‘B’ and will require a completely different movement pattern,” Van der Meer said.
In contrast, when typing the keys look mostly the same regardless of the letter. As a result, the study found that writing requires less brain activity in the visual and motor cortices.
“Since only small parts of the brain are active when typing, there is no need for the brain to communicate between different areas,” Van der Meer said.
Van der Meer’s previous research on children and young adults similarly found that people’s brains were more active when writing by hand than when typing. A 2017 study from Indiana University showed that writing by hand can connect visual and motor skills, which can help children better recognize letters.
But so far, there’s mixed evidence on whether taking notes on paper rather than on a laptop helps people better remember and understand information in class or improves their performance on exams.
It’s also difficult to know whether or how the brain activity in the new study might translate into real-life improvements in learning or memory, said neuroscientist Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of California, Merced, who was not involved in the research.
The study showed that when students write by hand, “many connections occur from the frontal and temporal areas of the brain, which are more involved in memory.” But a future study could actually “test participants on what they wrote by hand and what they remembered from what they wrote.”
Balasubramaniam said older adults can also see the cognitive benefits of handwriting: “But I think the biggest benefit is when the brain is still developing, because it kind of overlaps with other important learning processes that are happening.”
In the United States, the Common Core set of academic standards adopted by most states demands that children learn cursive in kindergarten and first grade. It also establishes writing milestones for fourth, fifth, and sixth graders.
“Children are being taught cursive right now. They will always be taught cursive. How much they actually use handwriting will be a mix of their own personal preferences and the expectations of the classes they’re in,” said Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the USC Rossier School of Education.
He added that writing by hand may be more beneficial for some children than others.
“Some children may have fine motor issues, so handwriting can be challenging for them,” Polikoff said. On the other hand, “there is some evidence that handwriting, especially cursive handwriting, works especially for students with dyslexia.”
The US has faced some political pressure to mandate handwriting in schools. California, for example, passed a law last year requiring public school teachers to offer some handwriting lessons in first through sixth grades. Polikoff estimates that about 20 states have some type of handwriting requirement.
But scientists don’t know whether handwriting provides additional cognitive benefits over printed writing.
Polikoff said some people support teaching cursive simply because historical documents were written that way, that people traditionally signed their names in cursive, or simply because “it’s a lovely art of dying.”
On the other hand, van der Meer said that by advocating that students write by hand in schools, they are often “accused of wanting to return to the Stone Age.” Both handwriting and typing should have a place in the classroom, he said.
“We live in a digital world, and the digital world is here to stay,” Van der Meer said. “If you need to write a long article or a long text, then of course it is much better to use a computer.”
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.