Psychology says people who type notes instead of writing them by hands may process information differently in their brain

For years, typing has slowly changed handwriting in school rooms, workplaces and even on a regular basis life. It’s faster, simpler to edit and normally extra handy. However analysis into how the mind handles the 2 actions means that writing notes by hand could contain the mind another way, significantly in the case of processing and remembering new info.

A 2024 examine printed in Frontiers in Psychology checked out what occurs within the mind when folks write by hand in contrast with after they kind. Researchers from the Norwegian College of Science and Know-how (NTNU) recorded brain activity from 36 college college students whereas they wrote phrases utilizing a digital pen and typed the identical type of info on a keyboard.

Handwriting concerned extra areas of the mind

The researchers used a high-density EEG system with 256 sensors to watch the individuals’ mind exercise. They discovered that handwriting produced extra widespread patterns of connectivity between totally different areas of the mind than typewriting.
The exercise concerned areas linked to motion, imaginative and prescient and sensory processing, together with areas within the central and parietal components of the mind. The researchers famous that connectivity in these areas, significantly at theta and alpha frequencies, has been linked in earlier analysis to memory formation and the method of taking in new info.

The distinction could partly come from the bodily act of forming letters. When writing by hand, the mind has to manage the motion of the fingers, monitor what the hand is doing and on the identical time evaluate the marks being made with the letters and phrases an individual is aware of.

Typing is totally different. An individual usually presses a key to supply a letter moderately than bodily drawing the form of that letter. This makes the motion extra repetitive, although typing itself can nonetheless require loads of consideration and ability.
A broader 2025 evaluate in The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing—Who Wins the Battle? additionally concluded that handwriting prompts a broader community concerned in motor, sensory and cognitive processing, whereas typing usually engages fewer of those neural circuits.

Writing notes by hand could power extra processing

There may be another excuse handwriting may have an effect on reminiscence in a different way, and it has much less to do with the pen itself and extra to do with the pace of writing.

Most individuals can not write by hand as rapidly as a lecturer can communicate. Due to that, college students taking handwritten notes normally need to determine what is definitely value placing down. They might shorten sentences, choose necessary phrases, make arrows or write small explanations as an alternative of copying every part.

Typing makes it a lot simpler to file info virtually phrase for phrase. That may be helpful, however it could additionally imply that an individual spends much less time deciding what the knowledge means whereas taking the notes.

Analysis mentioned by NPR has equally pointed to the slower, extra energetic nature of handwriting as one doable cause it will possibly assist studying. Neuroscientists have urged that the bodily course of of manufacturing letters can create further hyperlinks between what an individual sees, hears and does.

The distinction doesn’t imply typing is dangerous

The findings don’t imply folks ought to cease utilizing keyboards. Typing is clearly extra sensible for a lot of duties, particularly writing lengthy paperwork, speaking rapidly or working with giant quantities of knowledge.

The NTNU researchers themselves famous that know-how stays necessary and that the perfect methodology can depend upon what somebody is doing. Their findings primarily recommend that handwriting nonetheless has a spot in studying and shouldn’t disappear just because digital units are actually frequent.

There may be additionally an necessary limitation to remember. A 2025 commentary in Frontiers in Psychology questioned some elements of the unique examine, together with the truth that individuals used solely their proper index finger for the typing situation, which is totally different from regular expert typing utilizing a number of fingers and each palms. The authors mentioned this might have an effect on how the typing situation needs to be interpreted.

So, the analysis doesn’t show that handwriting will at all times make somebody keep in mind greater than typing. What it does recommend is that the 2 actions usually are not similar for the mind. Handwriting combines motion, contact, imaginative and prescient and psychological processing in a approach that will give newly discovered info extra methods to be encoded and later recalled.

For college kids particularly, preserving a pocket book and writing some notes by hand could due to this fact nonetheless be helpful, even in a world the place virtually every part else has moved to a display.

Handwriting can assist youngsters study letters

A number of the analysis round handwriting focuses on youngsters moderately than adults. Studying to type letters by hand offers youngsters repeated follow in recognising the form of every letter whereas additionally producing it themselves. Researchers have discovered that this will assist early literacy, since youngsters usually are not solely a letter but in addition studying the actions wanted to create it.

The doable advantages of handwriting usually are not essentially tied to conventional paper notebooks. Analysis mentioned by neuroscientists means that writing with a stylus on a digital display can contain most of the identical actions as writing with a pen. This implies faculties and college students don’t essentially have to decide on between know-how and handwriting, since digital handwriting can nonetheless protect the bodily act of forming letters.