Your choice of reading can have profound effects on your brain, as science strives to understand how the brain processes the written word.
The Leap to Literacy
The human brain has evolved to speak, but the mind must be taught to read. Early man had to make a huge evolutionary leap to literacy. Humanity's distant ancestors lived by hunting. Successful hunting depended on visual skills; recognising the difference between a snake and a stick aided survival.
The skill of reading lies partly in stimulating areas of the brain that are involved in object recognition but the brain is modular. Different modules interact to facilitate reading. Just as a child chooses which building bricks to use when constructing a vehicle, visual and motor regions of the brain connect in a multitude of combinations as a person reads.
Exercising English
English is a particularly difficult language to read, because there are often lots of sounds in one syllable, for example, ‘bridge’, ‘break’ or ‘stamp’. As one learns to read English, extra architecture is built up in the brain, rather as a body builder builds muscle.
The constant stimulus of reading a challenging language may be part of the inherent enjoyment of reading that is common to many.
The Electrifying Power of Shakespeare
Phil Davis, Professor of Literature at Liverpool University (UK), believes there is no better way to keep the reading networks of the brain active than reading Shakespeare. His research uses an electroencephalogram (EEG) to record brain waves (electrical signals emitted by the brain) as subjects read lines from Shakespeare’s plays.
The study showed that Shakespeare ‘electrifies’ the brain by using a noun as a verb. This linguistic technique is known as a functional shift. For example, in Coriolanus, ‘Godded’ is used instead of ‘deified’. The brain is caught short and has to work out the sudden change in usage of a word and how that affects the meaning of the sentence.
As the brain engages and puzzles over this, the activity of the brain reflects the new pathways of thinking and understanding that develop.
Comprehension is all
Davis’ research underlies the fact that the brain is quite capable of reading something without really comprehending its meaning. The drama of texts like Shakespeare’s lies partially in their ability to encourage active thought over their meaning. If reading is too easy there is no sense of solving a puzzle, with the resulting satisfaction at creating the complete picture.
Shakespeare uses the functional shift technique to catch the brain out and exercise the brain’s networks. Dissecting how the brain processes the written word may not only have significant implications for encouraging reading and understanding reading problems (such as dyslexia), but may also further the understanding of how the human brain evolved to read.
Sources
Goswami, U. The development of reading across languages. Ann NY Acad Sci (2008) 1145:1-12.
Thierry, G. Event-related potential characterisation of the Shakespearean functional shift in narrative sentence structure. Neuroimage (2008) 40: 923-31
Catherine Whitlock - After some fun years in medical research poring over a microscope, I now write about the scientific wonders that others have magnified.I ...
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