Stories stimulate the brain. Metaphors like “He had leathery hands” rouse the sensory cortex.
"Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life. ... The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated."
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin
Via Katherine Stevens