How reading fiction is affecting your brain?

‘Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth’

Albert Camus quoted it in the best possible way. Reading fiction is like travelling in whole another dimension, living someone else’s life through your own mind, you not only relate with the protagonist, you become the protagonist, you live another life, a life possibly out of your imaginative realms. You feel for people you’ve never met, you cry for them and you feel joy with them.

Many people may dismiss the idea of reading fictional books thinking it is irrelevant and useless to read them, they carry this notion that it’s pure waste of time to read one and generally associate it with nerds who always has their noses buried deep down into the pages of another world simply trying to put off the need to socialize. But hey, here’s the catch, they may actually be better in social skills than others.

Here’s how fiction affects the brain

1.Empathy

Now, empathy is the ability to put yourself in other’s shoes, in other words, an empath not only understands another person but actually can feel the pain of the other. While you read fiction, you enhance your ability to relate with the character, relate to his sufferings and his happiness, which, in turn enhances your social skill of empathising with another human and empathy works in shaping you as a person, in fact, it actually makes you a better person because empathy and pro-social behaviour is something which goes hand in hand.

2.Strengthens brain connectivity

A research was conducted according to which, it was concluded that reading fiction enhances connectivity in the brain and improves brain function. Reading a novel triggers changes in left temporal cortex, the area of brain responsible for language and sensorimotor reception. The neurons of this part of brain are responsible for tricking the mind into thinking it is doing something which it is not. Now, it would not be wrong to say that fiction to brain is exactly what exercise is to muscles.

3.Imagination
Pffft…Obviously. There’s absolutely no doubt in this one, fiction enhances your potentiality towards creativity, it fuels imagination. While engrossed in a novel, you most likely form your very own, personal movie theatre inside of your head. You are likely to imagine and form and play with every single detail being read, you reach that point where you no longer feel you are reading, you are seeing a movie inside of your imaginative field. This very thing affects you in real life as you start seeking for novel solutions to various problems. Fueling your imagination is also fueling your problem solving skills.

4.Self Improvement
I personally am mocked by many people for picking up fiction instead of self help books. But trust me, it is no less than a therapy, it is your very own induced meditation and an escape you truly can enjoy. Reading fiction is proved to improve Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to attribute mental states- beliefs, intents, desires, emotions, knowledge etc to oneself and to others. We live life we can never possibly imagine, we go to places we never thought could exist, we learn to care for people we’ve never met. It has been concluded that reading for as little as 6 minutes can reduce stress by 60%. It improves vocabulary, it makes a person more tolerant and open minded improving a person’s emotional intelligence. Now is it something less of self-help?

Apparently, a Dutch researcher conducted a research where he told subjects to read either newspaper articles about riots in Greece and liberation day in Netherlands or the first chapter from the Nobel Prize winner novel ‘Blindness’by Jose Saramago, conclusion being that their empathy levels were risen, not only immediately after reading the novel but even higher after a week.
Not only empathy, it works on your social cognition also, better memory, focus, reasoning etc. Perhaps reading fiction does affect people in a better way and being a better human overall.
So now that we are aquainted with the knowlegde about the vast field of benefits, don’t hesitate from picking up a good fictional work, or if you already are a fellow bibliophile, feel free to suggest some good reads. I would love to explore some more!