Scientists have found that reading a novel may change your brain — for days after going through the book, a new study suggests. Researchers at the Emory University have detected what may be biological traces related to this feeling: Actual changes in the brain that linger, at least for a few days, after reading a novel. The study focused on the lingering neural effects of reading a narrative.
21 undergraduate students participated in the experiment, which was conducted over 19 consecutive days. All of the study subjects read the same novel, ‘Pompeii’ - a 2003 thriller by Robert Harris that is based on the real-life eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ancient Italy.
For the first five days, the participants came in each morning for a base-line fMRI 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. They were asked to read the assigned section in the evening, and come in the following morning. After taking a quiz to ensure they had finished the assigned reading, participants underwent an fMRI scan of their brain in a non-reading, resting state.
After completing the participants returned for five more mornings to undergo additional scans in a resting state. The results showed heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, on the mornings following the reading assignments.