Reading Can Transport Your Brain... And Not Just As A Figure Of Speech

This article in Emory University's eScience Commons by Carol Clark, summarizing the latest research on reading and our brains, was fascinating.

The University's researchers, lead by neuroscientist Gregory Berns, found:

“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,” Berns says. “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.”

...“It remains an open question how long these neural changes might last,” Berns says. “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.”

Pretty heady stuff!

Their research was published by the journal "Brain Connectivity."

Illustrate, Write, and Keep Changing Brains On!
Lee