Handwriting vs. Typing: What the Brain Research Actually Shows (and Doesn’t)

A Norwegian neuroscientist’s brain-imaging work has been making the rounds again, repackaged as proof that typing is bad for your brain and handwriting is the secret to learning. I got caught up in the online chatter on the topic….enough to want to blog about it. The story is compelling, but honestly, the science is more interesting than the headline.

Audrey van der Meer has spent roughly two decades at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology studying how the developing brain handles movement, perception, and writing. Her January 2024 EEG study with F.R. Van der Weel (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945/full) is the one that triggered the latest round of media coverage. Her team recorded brain activity in 36 right-handed university students using a 256-channel sensor array while the students wrote single words with a digital pen on a touchscreen, then typed the same words on a keyboard. When the students wrote by hand, theta and alpha connectivity patterns lit up across parietal and central brain regions. When they typed, most of those patterns disappeared.

That’s the part that drove the headlines. Here’s the part that didn’t.

What the study actually tested

The protocol involved 36 adults writing single, well-known words. It did not test memory. It did not test retention. It did not test learning. And it did not test children, despite the paper’s call to “expose children, from an early age, to handwriting activities in school.”

Typing was also restricted to the right index finger only. No two hands. No visual feedback on screen. Anyone who has ever taken notes on a laptop will recognize that this is not how typing actually works.

The community commentary

In January 2025, Svetlana Pinet (Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language) and Marieke Longcamp (Aix-Marseille University) published a formal commentary in the same journal (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1517235/full) raising four issues that deserve attention:

• The protocol included no learning task, so any conclusion about classroom learning is inferred, not measured.
• Statistical analysis compared only the difference between conditions, not connectivity within each condition on its own, which puts strain on the flat assertion in the title.
• One-finger typing is not normal typing. Real typing is bimanual and coordinated, and that coordination is known to drive its own inter- and intra-hemispheric connectivity.
• No behavioral measures were reported. Participants’ typing skills were never assessed, even though typing fluency varies enormously and shapes cognitive load.

Pinet and Longcamp are careful to note that previous research does support handwriting benefits for letter recognition, early literacy, and word recall. They are not arguing that handwriting doesn’t matter. They are arguing that this specific EEG study, on its own, doesn’t carry the policy weight the popular coverage handed it.

The Princeton study still stands

The often-cited 2014 study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer is a different kind of evidence. They tested 327 students across three experiments, measured comprehension after lectures, and found that handwritten note-takers outperformed laptop note-takers on conceptual questions. The mechanism in that study was not brain connectivity, but selection. Students who couldn’t write fast enough were forced to listen, decide what mattered, and reframe it in their own words. The act of choosing was the learning.

My thoughts

While not a research expert, I did spend a couple years in partnership with the BYU Marriott School of Management leading research projects, and developed some opinions along the way about how to conduct research. The Norwegian EEG result is suggestive, not conclusive. Pinet and Longcamp are right that one study with 36 adults and one-finger typing cannot dictate classroom policy, even if I agree with the conclusion. The brain-connectivity-to-learning leap deserves the scrutiny.

But the Mueller and Oppenheimer mechanism does not depend on EEG. It depends on cognitive load. When you slow down, paraphrase, decide what’s worth keeping, and revise as you go, you process more deeply. That’s the part I find most useful for knowledge work, and it’s the part that survives the methodological pushback. This is what I’ve learned about my own reading and comprehension — something I picked up back in high school about how my own brain processes information. Handwriting forces selection and revision, and has a deeper imprint on the brain. Typing rewards transcription. Those are different cognitive activities even if the brain imaging never settles the matter.

You don’t have to abandon your keyboard to benefit from this. Type for volume. Write by hand for the things you want to keep. Sketchnoting a presentation, jotting key takeaways from a podcast, or running a discovery session with a physical notebook isn’t nostalgia. It’s a deliberate way to slow down and process. I love the new AI tools for capturing a meeting transcript and summarizing notes, but it is much more powerful when combined with my handwritten notes and impressions — much of which is missed through automation. It’s a better-together story IMHO.

The brain research will keep evolving. The behavioral finding has held up for over a decade. That’s the part worth acting on.