READING REWIRES THE BRAIN

Reading is cool. The more you read, the more intelligent you get. It's like building the muscle memory of the brain( doing stuffs over and over again). Picking up a book and spending quality time with it takes effort unless you already wired the body into doing it.
sometimes, I feel like reading badly and sometimes not at all. But the main thing about reading is being able to remember, and at a later time still be able to explain to a group of people if possible.
After reading a novel, actual changes linger in the brain, at least for a few days, report researchers. Stays as flash or sometimes as deja-vu.
Their findings, that reading a novel may cause changes in resting-state connectivity of the brain that persist, appear in the journal Brain Connectivity.

“Stories shape our lives and in some cases help define a person,” says neuroscientist Gregory Berns, lead author of the study and the director of Emory University’s Center for Neuropolicy. “We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what they do to it.” 

Neurobiological research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) has begun to identify brain networks associated with reading stories in the FMRI scanner. The study focused on the lingering neural effects of reading a narrative. Twenty-one(21) Emory undergraduates 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.
“The story follows a protagonist, who is outside the city of Pompeii and notices steam and strange things happening around the volcano, he tries to get back to Pompeii in time to save the woman he loves. Meanwhile, the volcano continues to bubble and nobody in the city recognizes the signs.”
The researchers chose the book due to its page-turning plot. “It depicts true events in a fictional and dramatic way, It was important to us that the book had a strong narrative line.”
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, the participants underwent an FMRI scan of their brain 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.
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.
“Even though the participants were not actually reading the novel while they were in the scanner, they retained this heightened connectivity. We call that a ‘shadow activity,’ almost like a muscle memory.”

Heightened connectivity was also seen in the central sulcus of the brain, the primary sensory motor region of the brain. Neurons of this region have been associated with making representations of sensation for the body, a phenomenon known as grounded cognition. Just thinking about running, for instance, can activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running.

“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. 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.”

So, even little as it may seem. Reading is also like having a conversation with the author. Being able to get any mistake experienced by the author and turn it to an opportunity for yourself.  So read !