The telling of the story challenges the brain to create entirely new routing every time. Every new story means that new neural connections must be made between all the fields involved in imagery and the sensory maps of the brain. New fields must be established, new connections between those fields must be established. The brain has to continually expand its neural connections.  Remember, the neural connections are what count, not just the number of neurons, but the neural connections. So, each new story demands a complete, new, re‑routing of the neural patterns themselves. It means the brain has to continually expand and expand its operations, auditory, visual, sensory fields, and all the rest of it, with each story. This builds the foundation for all forms of abstract, symbolic and metaphoric processing that visual stimulation bypasses altogether.

Now, let's look at storytelling.  You will find that storytelling starts, the child responds to storytelling very early, even before they can talk.  What happens in storytelling is the word, here comes in the word as a vibration.  Again, that's the only sensory input.  And that challenges the whole brain, not just to create an image in keeping with each word, but to create moving imagery, fluid imagery that follows the flow of the words.  It sets up an inner world scenario, a whole inner world scene representing the story, and in which the scene is constantly shifting according to shifting of the words themselves.

This is found to be a major challenge of the brain.  The job is so enormous that the child goes into total entrainment.  That is all of the energy moves into this visual process of the inner world.  They go catatonic.  Body stops all movement, their jaw drops down, their eyes get great big and wide, and they are literally not in this world.  Their eyes are wide open, they are not looking at anything outwardly.  They are looking at the marvelous world that starts forming within them.
Now, I have heard people say, "oh, I can't think in imagery at all, I have no capacity for internal images".  Believe me, your brain thinks in imagery.  One of the most interesting discoveries made recently, and it's of course, I guess, still hypothetical, is the capacity of the brain to operate depends entirely on imagery.  Its imagery transfer, primarily, that goes on.  The discovery that even congenitally blind children think in images is kind of interesting.  They find that congenitally blind teenagers can solve spatial, geometric organizational problems far better than seeing children.  Why?  Because they have developed such an acutely accurate, internal visual process.  It's just a matter of accessing, getting at it.  
So, we find that the telling of the story challenges the brain into entirely new routing every time.  Every new story means that new neural connections must be made between all the fields involved in imagery, you see, and the sensory maps of the brain, and so on, new fields must be established, new connections between those fields must be established.  So the brain has to continually expand its neural connections.  And remember, the neural connections are what count, not just the number of neurons, but the neural connections.  We have already covered that.  And so, each new story demands what?  A complete, new, re routing of the neural patterns themselves.  Do you see what this does?  It means the brain has to continually expand and expand its operations, auditory, visual, sensory fields, and all the rest of it, with each story.  

Then we get into the idea, why does the child want to hear the same story over and over and over.  Because anytime a field establishes long range connections with other fields, this requires their long range axons.  And it's those that must be myelinated to lock in a pattern and preserve the activities of that particular neural field and its capacities.  

So, we find that once these fields, in regard to that story and that fluid connection of imagery, stabilizes, and those connections become firm, then the child will, the repetition of the story is no longer so necessary.  Do they want to hear the same story over and over and over because they want to learn the story?  They know it perfectly after one hearing.  They will correct you if you get one word wrong, see, the second time.  No, it's to establish this enormous challenge to the brain and all these new neural connections that are demanded.  

Now then, the next step in this is, once the neural fields are stabilized, and you will find this happening, is the child will want to act out the imagery, act out the inner world they have created.  This completes the circuitry.  We have put the stimulus coming in, they have created the internal world, now they want to take the internal world and project it back out onto their external world, as Vygotsky, the great Russian said, he died, I think, at 32, he was among our most brilliant developmentalist, he said, "they want to modify the external world by the internal world, and play in a world of their own creation".

I give the example over and over, my favorite one with this last family of mine, our little toddler, when she was about 14 months old, she was very precocious, we would tell her the three bears story over and over until I was sick of the three bears stories.  And then suddenly one evening as we sat at the table to eat, and she takes a bite, and she says, "oh, it's too hot, we must go for a walk in the forest".  Now, immediately, she has represented her plate of food as a bowl of porridge, and immediately, I am papa bear, here is mamma bear, and she is baby bear, and we are going for a walk in the forest.  Now, what has she done?  She has created an internal world, stabilized it, and then she wants to take the internal and project it back onto the external world, and change her external world according to the dictates of her own inner construction.  

To the extent that we are willing to go along with that, and interrupt the meal, which I got sick of doing, she wanted to play it over and over, and go along with it and be papa bear, to that extent, this little tiny thing discovers this great secret, that her own internal capacities of creation can modify and make a profound difference in her own external world.  Got it?  Can make a difference.  

Now, the Swedish Pediatrics Institute came out with a study showing that the child with imagination was far less prone to violence than a child without imagination.  Why?  Because the child without imagination is subject to the immediate sensory environment bombarding them without any alternatives, you see.  So, if their sensory environment bombarding them is unpleasant, or demeaning, or insulting, or threatening, they have no choice, out of their survival drive, but to immediately lash out against the sensory input which is threatening, you see, and try to change it.  Whereas, the child with imagination will immediately create an alternate inner scenario in which they don't have to undergo all that.  They can create an alternate to it.  And through that, they can sift through and find an alternate mode of response to this, an alternate behavior that is not violent and that doesn't react to the violence with more violence, whatever it might be, but reacts with much higher cortical structures.  Which means, the child without imagination is operating out of purely ancient, reptilian sensory motor, kind of, response patterns of defense against a hostile world.  Whereas, the child with imagination is using much higher evolutionary cortical structures for doing what?  Creating an inner world in which this is not the case, but in which something else is taking place. Do you follow that?  Now, don't forget that when we look at the massive rise of violence today.