Your brain can grow from reading and learning – e-books offer the same benefit as paper books

The number of people who read for fun appears to be steadily dropping. Fifty percent of UK adults say they don’t read regularly (up from 42 percent in 2015) and almost one in four young people aged 16 to 24 say they’ve never been readers, according to research by The Reading Agency.

Two regions in the left hemisphere of the brain, which are crucial for language, are different in people who are good at reading and are likely to be shaped by the habit.

Clearly, brain structure can tell us a lot about reading skills. Importantly, though, the brain is malleable—it changes when we learn a new skill or practice an already acquired one. Reading is likely to shape the structure of the left Heschl’s gyrus and temporal pole. So, if you want to keep your Heschl’s thick and thriving, pick up a good book and start reading.

Reading is the same whether you read an e-book or a paper book. The big difference is e-books are generally a lot more accessible, are cheaper, take up less space, and usually have some form of dictionary for quick word lookups.

There is really no excuse not to read: Books are freely available in libraries, many classics are in the public domain, and there are very diverse topics to cover ever possible interest type. Time though is typically the excuse most give, but this is also not very true, if you consider carefully what a 24-hour day looks like. I set aside 30 mins, when going to bed at night, to read. It also has the added bonus of relaxing the mind and readying it for sleep.

See wired.com/story/good-at-readin…
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