Things That Happen to Our Minds When We Read !!

Any book lover can let you know: diving into a great novel is an immersive experience that can make your brain wake up with imagery and  feelings and even turn on your senses. It sounds sentimental, however there’s genuine, hard proof that supports these things happening to your brain when you read books. In reading, we can really physically change our brain structure, become more empathetic, and even trick our brains into thinking we’ve encountered what we’ve only read in novels.

• We make photos in our minds, even without being prompted: 

Reading books and different materials with clear imagery is not only fun, it additionally allows us to create worlds in our own minds. But did you realize that this happens regardless of the fact that you don’t mean it to?

• Spoken word can put your brain to work: 

Critics are quick to dismiss audiobooks as a sub-par reading experience, but research has shown that the act of listening to a story can light up your brain.

• Reading about experiences is almost the same as living it: 

Have your ever felt so connected to a story that it’s as if you experienced it in real life? There’s a good reason why: your brain actually believes that you have experienced it. When we read, the brain does not make a real distinction between reading about an experience and actually living it. Novels are able to enter into our thoughts and feelings. 

• Different styles of reading create different patterns in the brain: 

Any kind of reading provides stimulation for your brain, but different types of reading give different experiences with varying benefits.

• Your brain adapts to reading e-books in seven days: 

If you’re used to reading paper books, picking up an e-reader can feel very awkward at first. But experts insist that your brain can adopt the new technology quickly, no matter your age or how long you’ve been reading on paper. In fact, the human brain adapts to new technology, including e-reading, within seven days.

• E-books lack in spatial navigability: 

Although your brain can adapt to e-books quickly, that doesn’t mean they offer the same benefits as a paperback. Specifically, they lack what’s called “spatial navigability,” physical cues like the heft of pages left to read that give us a sense of location. Evolution has shaped our minds to rely on location cues to find our way around, and without them, we can be left feeling a little lost. Some e-books offer little in the way of spatial landmarks, giving a sense of an infinite page. However, with page numbers, percentage read, and other physical cues, e-books can come close to the same physical experience as a paper book.

• Story structure encourages our brains to think in sequence, expanding our attention spans: 

Stories have a beginning, middle, and end, and that’s a good thing for your brain. With this structure, our brains are encouraged to think in sequence, linking cause and effect. The more you read, the more your brain is able to adapt to this line of thinking. Neuroscientists encourage parents to take this knowledge and use it for children, reading to kids as much as possible. In doing so, you’ll be instilling story structure in young minds while the brain has more plasticity, and the capacity to expand their attention span.

• Reading changes your brain structure (in a good way):

Not everyone is a natural reader. Poor readers may not truly understand the joy of literature, but they can be trained to become better readers. And in this training, their brains actually change.

•  Deep reading makes us more empathetic:

It feels great to lose yourself in a book, and doing so can even physically change your brain. As we let go of the emotional and mental chatter found in the real world, we enjoy deep reading that allows us to feel what the characters in a story feel. And this in turn makes us more empathetic to people in real life, becoming more aware and alert to the lives of others.