{"id":3120,"date":"2012-04-09T07:35:35","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T15:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.everhear.com\/?p=3120"},"modified":"2024-11-26T10:34:34","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T18:34:34","slug":"reading-changes-your-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/reading-changes-your-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading changes your brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the areas which we treat at this clinic is literacy- reading and writing skills.\u00a0 Most kids who struggle with reading don\u2019t enjoy doing it and are not very motivated to read outside of the necessary reading for school.\u00a0 As an avid reader myself, this makes me sad because I want everyone to love books and enjoy reading as much as I do.\u00a0 As a speech-language pathologist, I am also very aware of the impact that a kid\u2019s ability to read has on their academic performance, particularly as students begin to approach those late elementary years and beyond.\u00a0 A study released last year<\/a> really highlighted this point:<\/p>\n

\u201cA student who can’t read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time. Add poverty to the mix, and a student is 13 times less likely to graduate on time than his or her proficient, wealthier peer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reading activates the brain<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no doubt that reading is an important academic and life skill.\u00a0 And it turns out that reading has a huge impact on our brains- far beyond just the work of recognizing and understanding the words on the page.\u00a0 The \u00a0article The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction<\/a> by Annie Murphy Paul (author of Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives<\/em>) talks about a number of research studies looking at how the brain reacts when reading. \u00a0These studies have found that reading actually activates areas of the brain beyond just the language regions.\u00a0 Words on the page can cause brain activity in the areas typically associated with touch (words like \u201cHe had leathery hands\u201d), smell (words like \u201cperfume\u201d and \u201ccoffee\u201d), and even specific motor areas (phrases like \u201cHe kicked the ball\u201d activated different areas of the motor cortex than other phrases related more to arm movement).<\/p>\n

Reading fiction taps into social skills<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this research into how the brain reacts to reading indicates that the brain doesn\u2019t differentiate a lot between reading about an experience and actually experiencing it.\u00a0 It makes sense, then, that reading different types of books would lead to different brain activity.\u00a0 Non-fiction and fiction provide for very different reading experiences.\u00a0 Reading fiction is unique because it allows the reader to experience how others deal with a wide variety of social interactions.\u00a0 Fiction also allows the reader an opportunity to actually enter into another person\u2019s thoughts and feelings- something we clearly can\u2019t do in real life!\u00a0 Research again supports the idea that the brain treats social interactions among characters in fiction books similarly to real-life social interactions.\u00a0 Strong associations were found among brain networks used to understand fiction stories and the networks used to figure out the thoughts and feelings of others (also known as \u201ctheory of mind\u201d).\u00a0 Individuals who read fiction stories often have been found to better understand and empathize with others.\u00a0 Even in young children, research has supported that the more stories the children had read to them, the better their theory-of-mind.<\/p>\n

Today’s a great day to break out those books with your kids.\u00a0Happy reading!<\/p>\n

Beth<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the areas which we treat at this clinic is literacy- reading and writing skills.\u00a0 Most kids who struggle with reading don\u2019t enjoy doing it and are not very motivated to read outside of the necessary reading for school.\u00a0 As an avid reader myself, this makes me sad because I want everyone to love…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","schema":"","fname":"","lname":"","position":"","credentials":"","placeID":"","no_match":false,"name":"","company":"","review":"","address":"","city":"","state":"","zip":"","lat":"","lng":"","phone1":"","phone2":"","fax":"","mon1":"","mon2":"","tue1":"","tue2":"","wed1":"","wed2":"","thu1":"","thu2":"","fri1":"","fri2":"","sat1":"","sat2":"","sun1":"","sun2":"","hours-note":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[815,48,50,816],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12323,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions\/12323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everhear.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}