Handwriting has become a dying art, now that kids start using keyboards as soon as they begin school. But writing things out by hand may be a critical way we train our brains, several studies suggest.
手写已经变成了一项即将消失的艺术，现在孩子们一进入学校，就开始使用键盘。但许多研究显示，用手写字是开发我们大脑的一项重要方式。
Writing by hand is different from typing because it requires using strokes to create a letter, rather than just selecting the whole letter by touching a key, says Virginia Berninger a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. These finger movements activate large regions of the brain involved in thinking, memory, and language.Handwriting helps children learn letters and shapes, improves their composition of ideas, and may also boost fine-motor skills development.
华盛顿大学的心理学教授维吉尼亚 · 贝尔宁格解释，手写不同与打字，因为人们必须一笔一画地写出字母，而不是简单地按着键盘，敲出整个字母。手写时，手指运动刺激了大脑的大部分领域，包括控制思考，记忆和语言这几个区域。手写帮助孩子学习单词及记住其的形状，有利于他们思维的形成，并且有可能会发展他们小肌肉运动技能 。（打毛衣，微笑等这些都是小肌肉运动）
A study by Berninger found that in grades two, four, and six, children wrote more words, faster, and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand than when typing on a keyboard.
贝尔宁格的研究发现， 二年级，四年级以及六年级的孩子，与打字相比，他们手写的单词量更大，速度更快，并能表达更复杂的思想。
A separate study by researchers at Indiana University found that children who practiced printing by hand had more active brains than kids who simply looked at letters.
印第安纳州研究员的另一研究发现，练习写字的孩子的大脑，比只看不写的孩子更为活跃。
It's not just children who benefit from writing things out by hand, says a study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Adults learning a new language remember its characters better if they write them out by hand than if they produce them with a keyboard.
而《认知神经科学杂志》一项研究表示，不仅仅是孩子们受益于手写。成年人在学习一门新的语言的时候，手写比敲键盘更能帮助记忆单词。
As more people spend their days on the computer, says neuroscientist P. Murali Doraiswamy of Duke University, “retraining people in handwriting skills could be a useful cognitive exercise.”
杜克大学的当人们神经系统学教授穆拉利 ·多雷斯瓦米教授声称，人们一天大部分时间都在电脑边，“重新训练人们的手写技术，会是项有益的认知活动。”
