Does Genre Literature Affect the Teen Brain?
A three-day conference, The Emergent Adult – Adolescent Literature and Culture, at Cambridge University is going to explore the effect on the teenage brain of books like Twilight and the Harry Potter series. Scientists, authors and education experts will all gather to discuss whether there are ‘Twilight zones’ in the teenage mind; areas of the brain in some way affected or altered by the reading of books like the wildly-popular vampire novels of Stephanie Meyer, author of the Twilight series now being made into films. The three-day conference, starting today and lasting through he weekend, will make connections between recent neuroscience research and the representation of the adolescent in literature, film, computer games and social networking sites. “We are bringing together people from different disciplines from all over the world to look at the physiological, psychological, chemical and sociological effects of reading teenage fiction,” said organizer Professor Maria Nikolajeva, the
