Recent study indicates links between reading and brain change
There’s nothing quite like the excitement of getting caught up in a great novel. However, your favourite character may not be the only thing that stays with you long after the final chapter – a recent study from Emory University suggests that reading fiction can physically alter your brain.
“It seems plausible that if something as simple as a book can leave the impression that one’s life has been changed, than perhaps it is powerful enough to cause changes in brain function and structure,” researchers said.
To explore whether reading can create detectable changes in brain structure, researchers examined the brains of 21 undergraduate students using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. Researchers captured a baseline image of the student’s brains over five days before prescribing them their nightly homework: read several chapters of the historical thriller novel Pompeii by Robert Harris – selected for its “classical narrative arc.” During the following nine days of reading, students were presented with a brief quiz on the previous night’s material before their daily MRI scan. Daily brain scans continued for five days after students had finished the novel.
The MRIs illustrated increased connectivity between regions of the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain that is often associated with long-term memory and language comprehension.
“We have demonstrated that, across the likely array of diverse experiences encountered by our participants, there was a detectable and significant common alteration of their RSN (resting-state network) associated with reading sections of a novel the previous evening,” researchers said.
During the study, some neural connections quickly faded. However, certain connections persisted throughout the five days after the student’s completion of the novel – and these connections were, interestingly, focused around motor areas of the brain.
Of course, reading isn’t typically regarded as a very physical activity. It doesn’t require the hand-eye coordination of tennis, nor the endurance of a marathon runner. Consequently, researchers hypothesized that the students had experienced a process known as “embodied semantics.” In this phenomenon, brain connectivity during the thought of an action copies the connectivity that would occur if an individual were actually experiencing that action.
“We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense,” said the lead author of the study, Professor Gregory Berns. “The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist.”
This study is not the first to highlight the phenomenon of embodied semantics. A 2005 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated activity in motor areas of the brain among subjects who were listening to sentences describing physical actions. The Emory University study is, however, one of the first studies implicating the potential long-term impacts of reading on the brain.
More research will need to be carried out to determine just how long-lasting these neural changes are. “It remains an open question for further study,” researchers said.