Reading a novel can cause measurable physical changes in the brain that linger - at least for a few days - after reading a novel, according to a recent study.
Researchers at Emory University in Georgia found that immersing oneself into a book may cause changes in the "resting-state connectivity of the brain," according to a press release from the school.
"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," Gregory Berns, neuroscientist and director of Emory's Center for Neuropolicy, said in a statement. "We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what they do to it."
Twenty-one undergraduate students were involved in the study, which was conducted over 19 consecutive days.
For the experiment, students read the same novel "Pompeii," a 2003 thriller based on the real-life eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ancient Italy. The scientists deliberately chose this book because of its "page-turning" plot, researchers said in a press release.
For the first five days of the study, the subjects came in each morning for a MRI scan of their brains in a resting state. Then they were given nine sections of the novel, about 30 pages each, over a nine-day period. After taking a quiz to ensure they had finished the assigned reading, the participants underwent a scan while their brains were in a non-reading, resting state. After completing all nine sections of the novel, the participants returned for five more mornings to undergo additional scans in a resting state.
Researchers found that the participants had a heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, on the mornings following the reading assignments. It was seen in the central sulcus of the brain, the primary sensory motor region of the brain.
Berns said although participants were not actually reading the novel while they were in the scanner, they retained the heightened connectivity.
"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," he 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."
Berns said the changes persisted five days after participants finished reading the nine sections of the novel.
"It remains an open question how long these neural changes might last," he added. "But the fact that we're detecting them over a few days for a randomly assigned novel suggests that your favorite novels could certainly have a bigger and longer-lasting effect on the biology of your brain."
