How Regular Reading Can Boost Brain Health

Former U.S. Marine Corps officer Jennifer Grieves made history as the first female pilot to ferry a U.S. president on board Marine One. Throughout her 28-year career as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, she held various key roles as a helicopter pilot and administrative officer. During her free time, Jennifer Grieves enjoys riding her Peloton bike and reading.

Scientific studies have found that in addition to being pleasurable, reading benefits both the body and the mind. Accordingly, developing the habit of regularly reading books can boost brain health.

In 2013, researchers measured how reading the novel “Pompeii” for nine consecutive days impacted the brains of the participants in the study. The researchers scanned subjects’s brains using MRIs over the period, discovering that as the tension in the story escalates, more and more areas in the brain begin to light up with activity. After the nine-day period, the participants showed increased connectivity in the area of the brain associated with perspective taking and story comprehension. This study is archived in PubMed Central.

Another 2013 study by scientists from Rush University Medical Center discovered that people who engaged in brain-stimulating activities such as reading are at less risk of developing the biological precursors of dementia such as plaques, lesions, and tau-protein tangles. This was supported by another study archived in PubMed Central, which showed that older adults who read and solve mathematical problems on a daily basis have improved and better maintained cognitive functions and are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related mental disorders.