Reading and brain power

Editorial-January 2, 2014, 

A team of researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, US, has revealed that reading a book could improve one’s brain function for days. Reading a story is said to cause changes in the brain’s ‘resting-state’. Neuroscientist and lead author of the study Gregory Berns believes what really happens is that ‘the mind is tricked into thinking it is doing something it's not—for example thinking about running can activate the neurons linked to the physical act itself’. In other words, he says, reading a novel could ‘transport you into the body of the protagonist’.

One experiences a similar effect in the theatre as well and it is something Bertolt Brecht frowned on. He invented the V-effekt or the alienation effect to distance his audience from what he called their ‘emotional involvement’ in his plays by reminding them of the artificiality of performances from time to time. But, as for readers, such jolting reminders are not possible.

Before Berns et al, a research team consisting of scientists, psychologists and English academics at Liverpool University established, in January last year, that reading classics boosted one’s brain power. It was found that challenging prose and poetry set off far more electrical activity in the brain than abridged versions thereof. Volunteers were made to read Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Eliot and others and with the help of scanners, the researchers established that their brains were ‘lit up’ when they came across unusual words, surprising phrases or difficult sentence structures.

The novel Berns and his team used in their research was a thriller of the first water— Pompeii by Robert Harris. Those who have read this unputdownable book will agree that its effect lasts on one’s mind for not just days but weeks on end. It is a cliffhanger, as it were, with a difference. Mark Lawson, in a fine review of the book in The Guardian, has said that ‘rather than a whodunit, Pompeii is a whenwillit in which the killer looms in full view over the city, hissing magma’. The story revolves round a person who struggles to save the love of his life while Mount Vesuvius is erupting.

No scientific study has so far been conducted to find out the impact of movies like The Exorcist,Gladiator and Psycho—which, as an early interview with Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, has revealed, was originally meant to be a comedy!—on the brain. Their effect on the filmgoer does not go away when he leaves the cinema. But, it certainly does not last as long as that of a thriller novel because films don’t leave much to the viewer’s imagination.

Some research should be undertaken to find out the kind of changes films, dramas etc cause in the brain’s activity. It should also be found out whether listening to stories has the same effect as reading novels on the brain. There is reason to believe it does.

Now that researchers have scientifically proved that classics boost brain power and novels bring about, to borrow a phrase from Berns and others, ‘heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, and the primary sensory motor region’ research should be conducted to gauge the damage trash, especially smut, causes to our brains.

The importance of reading has been known for centuries though its beneficial effect on the brain has been proved only recently. So, folks, you don’t have to step up your caffeine or nicotine intake or pay obeisance to the liquid amber to improve your brain function; avoid drinkeries and make a beeline for a bibliotheca and read. What Mark Twain said about reading comes to mind: "A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read."