Brain Trip Dept.

Why We Get Lost in Books - Yahoo! News

Any avid reader knows the power of a book to transport you into another world, be it the wizard realm of "Harry Potter" or the legal intrigue of the latest John Grisham. Part of the reason we get lost in these imaginary worlds might be because our brains effectively simulate the events of the book in the same way they process events in the real world, a new study suggests.

Not too far from what I had suspected myself, actually.

This reminded me of something else I'd read, about how people with pronounced sociopathic tendencies process things that should have emotional heft with parts of their brains that are normally reserved for things like puzzles or linguistics. Perhaps those two portions of the brain are more intimately related than we think, and pass things back and forth between each other more freely than it might first appear.