Every week almost realized what a profound impact this was having on my life it was not just the exposure to new ideas but the way that my brain felt like it was rewiring itself it was a little bit hard to pinpoint exactly what was happening but I knew that something beneficial was going on i was trying to put my finger on exactly what it was that was changing in my brain and i was really struggling to do this in an effective way and so i i started to look into the literature the psychological neurological literature surrounding what reading actually does to your brain and it's actually quite interesting how well studied this is so I thought I'd share with you some of those findings and you know maybe encourage you to pick up a book or two.

John stein at oxford and susan greenfeld have presented a kind of interesting picture which is that unlike digital worlds where you're constantly attention switching you have short attention span as a result you're training your brain in that way reading is a linear process you're working from start to finish there's no jumping around there's no tabbing between things you're not context switching and so this this makes a lot of sense right like in my daily life as a student working there's there's not a whole lot of linear tasks it's not a whole lot of start to finish everything is jumping around bouncing between things but then when i get to a linear task and i want to sit down and work on one project it's difficult and i'm sure a lot of you watching this feel that way as well right when you sit down to write an essay or you sit down to do something that's hard and sometimes when you think it's not possible due to the burden of teacher given assignment so you can contact with affordable essay writing service to write your essay done and uh what reading has done for me what what reading has changed my brain to be a little bit more able to do is it's allowed me to to sit through those tasks which require this linear long attention span it's not that that's better than having you know a highly trained context switching short term uh you know attention span for certain tasks right but you need both you need to train both and we're constantly training the one through digital technology and very rarely training the other unless you're consistently reading or engaging in other linear tasks so the next phenomena come from a study which came out of Emory university which looked at the lingering effects of reading on the brain so what they did the the way the study was formatted was it was over a few weeks they took about 21 undergraduate students from the university and they had them read about a 30-page section of a novel in the evening and then the next morning they put them into an fmri and they compared what was happening in their brain to what was happening in their brain during a resting state before they had begun reading the novel now the first thing that they found which which i think is very interesting is they found heightened activity in the central sulcus of the brain the way that i understand it is the sensory neurons in your brain which would be firing.

 if you are for example running uh also fire when you are thinking about running or reading about running so you're quite literally kind of putting yourself in someone else's shoes when you're reading about them it's this very uh empathetic connection so what what i think is interesting about this research which uh kind of backs up with anecdotes right is that reading a novel is not just like a coldly analytical thing this is what i really hate about how reading is sometimes taught in schools which is this very heavy analysis you know what does the author mean by the the curtains are blue what emotion is that trying to signify right it doesn't let you get into the story it doesn't let you um empathize with the characters but when you're reading in this way that you're actually getting into the story like this and you're putting yourself in the character's shoes your brain is is quite literally imagining you in those shoes those same sensory neurons are firing and i don't know i just think that's really interesting like it's not the analysis of things it it's that your brain is actually experiencing it to some extent like to me that's that's really interesting I don't know Music now the most compelling thing that this study found at least in my opinion was that remind you this is the morning after they've been reading the researchers found that there was heightened connectivity within a portion of the brain known as the left temporal cortex which is uh associated with language and and facts and memory so what i think is so interesting about this is that whenever i think about the changes which have occurred in the way that i think after starting to read more one of the major things that I point to time and time again is how i keep finding connections between stories between facts between subjects and and that has been one of the major things that that has kept me going with reading and and made it such an enjoyable experience is i love finding these random connections and remembering a book that i read a couple of years ago and understanding how it relates to what i'm reading now what's very interesting is that that is the portion of the brain which is doing those connections and it's not just when i'm reading that i'm doing these things now it's when i'm going about in my everyday life.

 I’m finding these connections or in classes or in work that i'm doing or conversations that i'm having with people maybe most of all when we're talking about you know problems going on or anything like that i'm able to find connections back to books that i had read and so this this makes a lot of sense to me but it's interesting to see it on paper in a study that there are neurological differences and mind you they're they're lasting neurological differences we don't know how long they last um but the researchers said at least the next morning uh at least five days i believe they found and to me this makes a lot of sense and it's so interesting right because i love finding these connections it's it's one of the things that that lights my brain up the most it makes me that the happiest to be using my brain when i'm finding these connections and and yeah it's just so cool to see it on paper so yeah i wanted to make this video because i just i thought it was really interesting i make a lot of videos talking about reading in the in the anecdotal changes that it's had on my life and i've seen through my comments and through people messaging me who have started reading um the anecdotal changes is having on their life and so it's really interesting to see in academic literature the actual physical changes the neurological changes uh that it has on people i just think that's so cool like feeling a behavior change and then knowing that there's actually a neurological change going along with it that your brain is literally becoming more powerful because you're eating it's just cool i just think it's really neat i'd not like to thank audible for sponsoring this video now i was just looking at my audible library because i was thinking i've had audible for a really long time and i realized i have over 28 titles that i've listened to through audible and all of them have been incredibly enjoyable experiences one of the things that i love about audio books on audible is that the quality is consistently excellent every time i've listened to an audio book  through audible the voice acting has really added another element to the story and for that reason i prefer personally to listen to fiction audio books it's where i do a lot of my my fictional listening is where i get involved in these stories and so with that i'd like to recommend to you the fictional audio book which i listened to this month foundation by Isaac Asimov foundation is known as one of the foundational series in science fiction and as a sci-fi nerd i I knew that i had to get into it eventually the audio rendition of it on audible is amazing it was just a pleasure to listen to and i got through it pretty quickly and now i'm working my way through the rest of the series so if you want to listen to foundation or you want to listen to any other audio book  in audile’s massive collection then what i'll recommend you do is go to audible.com john fish or text code john fish to 500 500. so this is going to get you a 30-day free trial which includes one credit for any audiobook in their massive collection as well as unlimited audible original downloads it's a fantastic deal if you go to audible.com john fish or you text code john fish to 500. so I hope you enjoyed this video hopefully it has convinced you to get into a store to pick up a book an audiobook to get into one of these linear activities and start you know getting these connections in your brain firing because it's just a cool thing it's just really neat.