Read your way to a healthy brain

A recent study by Emory University indicates that reading a book boosts brain power for several days. Published in the journal Brain Connectivity, the study involved 12 students, participating over 19 consecutive days, each working their way through the same page-turning thriller: Pompeii, by George Harris.

Lead author Gregory Berns, of the university’s Centre of Neuropolicy, said, “We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.”

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging techniques to scan the students’ brains each morning, they found that reading increased brain activity in a similar manner to physically carrying out tasks, and also primed regions associated with language processing. So diving into the latest release from Waterstones may prove beneficial to our mental health. It may one day be tipped into the realm of adage: a page a day keeps the therapist away.

But who can find time for reading in today’s world? Even for those who love nothing more than to bury their heads in a good book, finding a gap in the schedule can be hard. And carving out quiet time for yourself doesn’t get any harder than when you’re a student.

Whilst being swaddled by a blanket of imagination has been among the few constant comforts of people the world over since time immemorial, the pace of today often means that the written word no longer holds sway as it once did.

Our culture has become overly visual, concerned with immediate satisfaction, conditioned to respond to tense musical cues and pensive looks into the middle-distance. Sweeping soliloquies and mellifluous prose seldom knead the knots in one’s back after a hard day.

Books may define much of what make us human: stories allow us to delve into another person’s mind, to imagine the impossible, to live lives that will only ever exist in the mind’s eye. But they involve input, concentration, and, sometimes, perseverance.

So far as many students are concerned, sit- ting with a cuppa and a dog-eared paperback comes fairly low on the list. There are sources of escapism that require far less effort. Most make do with a pint of purple and a slurred rumination on the divine purpose of the koan.

And yet, the evidence indicates that reading clears the cobwebs in a way that other stress-relievers fail to replicate. The study’s morning-after fMRI scans showed increased temporal cortex activity for up to five days after completing the novel, an area of the brain connected to language receptivity. This bears the hallmark of a kind of muscle memory, called ‘shadow activity’. This is due to the brain’s ability to become stimulated by the mere thought of an activity; thinking about riding a bike can induce the same mental states as actually riding one. And reading is certainly apt to get one thinking of activities the reader, lounging on the sofa, is certainly not doing – scaling Mt. Everest to deactivate a tactical nuke being chief among them.

Such a lingering boost in brain power could certainly prove useful, not only for those enrolled on arts degrees, but in any field of study; the ability to interpret and process language not only in a mechanical, but creative manner, is paramount ubiquitously.

So, whilst that episode of Strictly seems to eat up the long hours before bed just fine, perhaps think about what else you could be doing with your time, something that just might mean an extra deciding mark that ropes you that coveted First.