I’ll
admit it. I love to read. After a hard day of school, sometimes all I want to
do is curl up with a good fiction book and possibly a box of cookies. I love
the hours I spend reading, for it’s during that time that I get to escape into
a whole other world. However, even though for me reading feels like being
transported to a different world, new research describes how reading fiction
actually activates many of the same centers of the brain that real-life
experiences do. The brain, it seems, does not make distinctions between reading
about something and experiencing it in real-life.
A
new article in the New York Times
explores this connection between reading fiction and the areas of your brain it
activates. As you read, the same areas get activated in your brain as would be
activated if you were actually experiencing the book. For example, let’s just
say the protagonist of your book smells the scent of his grandma’s “home-made
apple pie wafting out from the open window”. As the reader, these lines would
activate the primary olfactory cortex, the area of your brain primarily
responsible for smelling. Cool, huh?
It
goes even further than just sensory stimulation though. Reading books where the
characters interact can actually help hone our real-life social skills.
Scientists at the York University of Canada found that reading toddlers books
can help with the development of their social skills from a young age and help
them to develop a keen “theory of mind”.
So
in the end, I guess my elementary school teachers really were on to something
when they told me reading is good for the brain, even if they didn’t mean it in
such a literal sense.
If you want to read the full New York Times article, here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?pagewanted=all
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