This Back Page scribe treats reading like an extreme sport.
I read until I get a headache and the book has to be prised from my hands. My hands and feet often go numb from resting in an awkward position for hours at a time.
I will not eat, sleep, or pay attention to any external stimuli until the book is done. I cease caring about trivial matters like “chores” or “back pain” or “friends”.
As a child, my parents would inflict reading bans as a punishment. My fiancé used to laugh at this idea – until he saw the full extent of my reading habits.
I chew through books. Anything from The Slap to Agatha Christie to Dungeon Crawler Carl is fair game.
The next time someone suggests that my book obsession is perhaps slightly extreme and/or bordering on unhealthy, though, I will have an academic article to hand which will assuage their concerns.
A new editorial article published in Psychological Medicine and authored by Cambridge University boffins Professor Barbara Sahakian and Dr Christelle Langley was written specifically to “highlight the importance of reading for pleasure as a means of supporting brain health, cognition, and overall well-being”.
They have five key arguments:
- that reading is associated with increased literacy and numeracy ability,
- that multiple surveys over the years show that reading reduces stress levels and increases empathy,
- that the US-based Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study links reading for pleasure with long-lasting benefits for brain health,
- that cognitively stimulating leisure activities like reading are associated with reduced risk of dementia, and
- that research demonstrates reading ability is associated with measurable structural changes in the brain, affecting both white matter connectivity and grey matter volume.
Importantly, this last piece of evidence finds that the structural brain changes are not limited to naturally stronger readers.
“A longitudinal study of 11 children with dyslexia aged 7–11 reported that an 8-week training program focusing on mental imagery, articulation, and tracing of letters, letter groups, and words significantly improved reading skills, some of which were sustained at an 8-week follow-up (Krafnick, Flowers, Napoliello, & Eden, 2011),” Professor Sahakian and Dr Langley wrote.
“These behavioral gains were accompanied by significant increases in gray matter volume in the left anterior fusiform gyrus/hippocampus, left precuneus, right hippocampus, and right anterior cerebellum.
“After training ended, the gains were maintained, indicating lasting structural adaptation associated with literacy development.”
Other studies still find associations between reading and increased cortical thickness, specifically in the areas of the brain related to language.
Given its accessibility and relatively low cost, the Cambridge psychology researchers say, reading represents a practical and scalable intervention for supporting brain health, cognitive development and well-being for young people at risk of educational disadvantage.
So, next time someone (my fiancé) wants to have a “conversation” about my “potentially destructive” reading habits, this humble scribe will be quick to question whether he is in fact motivated by a desire to see my cortical thickness decrease and my grey matter volume plummet.
Send your well-read story tips to Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au.
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