Science Confirms the Obvious: Literature is Good for Your Brain

In news that probably isn’t going to blow your mind, researchers have found that reading is good for your brain. But it’s not as straightforward as “book learnin’ is good for you.” By asking a test group of literary PhD candidates to read a Jane Austen novel inside of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, a Stanford researcher has found that critical, literary reading and leisure reading provide different kinds of neurological workouts, both of which constitute “truly valuable exercise of people’s brains.”