In January 2024, Inc. columnist Justin Bariso wrote about a study out of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) that gives the clearest neurological explanation yet for something teachers have suspected for years: writing by hand isn't just old-fashioned — it changes what your brain does while you learn.
What the study actually measured
Researchers led by brain scientist Audrey van der Meer had 36 university students either write in cursive on a touchscreen with a digital pen, or type using a single finger, as words appeared on a screen. Throughout, a high-density EEG recorded the electrical activity moving across their brains.
The difference wasn't subtle. As van der Meer put it, "brain connectivity patterns are far more elaborate when writing by hand than when typewriting on a keyboard." Typing barely activated the connections between brain regions. Handwriting lit them up.
Why connectivity is the part that matters
Van der Meer's explanation is the useful part: this kind of widespread connectivity "is known to be crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information." In other words, the extra brain activity that handwriting triggers isn't incidental — it's the same activity that's responsible for turning new information into something you can actually retrieve later.
Her theory for why is almost mechanical: forming each letter by hand engages fine motor control and multiple senses at once, in a way that pressing a key never does. It's a small detail with a big downstream effect — one reason, she notes, that children who first learn to write on a tablet often struggle to tell mirror-image letters like "b" and "d" apart. They've never physically felt the difference between producing one and the other.
Widespread brain connectivity is known to be crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information — and therefore is beneficial for learning.
This isn't a new idea — it's an old one, confirmed
Bariso's article points out that people have been leaning on this principle for a very long time, long before anyone could put electrodes on a scalp to prove it. Ancient Israelite kings were required to hand-copy the entire body of religious law, a practice that forced them to actually understand it, not just possess it. Centuries later, copywriters learned their craft by hand-transcribing the most successful ads ever written, internalizing the rhythm and logic of persuasive writing one physical word at a time.
Different eras, same underlying mechanism: the friction of writing by hand is a feature, not a bug.
The rule of writing
Bariso distills all of this into what he calls the rule of writing: if you want to clarify your thinking, remember something important, or understand a topic properly, write it down by hand — not on a keyboard. Slowing down enough to form each letter forces you to think about what you're actually saying, instead of just transcribing it.
His advice, in three words: "Don't type. Write."
Why Ayanam Learn is built around this
This is the exact mechanism behind Ayanam Learn's one non-negotiable rule: every reconstruction session and every scheduled review sends you to a blank physical sheet of paper, never a text box. It's not nostalgia — it's the same finding Mueller and Oppenheimer reported back in 2014, now backed by direct evidence of what's happening inside the brain while it happens. Typing your way through a "recall" session skips the exact neural activity that makes recall worth doing in the first place.
Source: Justin Bariso, "Neuroscience Says 1 Simple Habit Boosts Brain Connectivity, Learning, and Memory," Inc.com, Jan 28, 2024, citing research by Audrey van der Meer, NTNU.