By Kirstien Billings
LifeAtStart.com reporter
Not many people know what books can do to your brain. There are a lot of positive effects that happen while reading a book. It can help you become more intelligent and score higher on reading tests. It can also make you more empathetic, and it can reduce the chances you have of developing Alzheimer’s.
Reading books can also help you relax, in a study by Sussex University in 2009, reading can help reduce stress by up to 68%. If you have trouble sleeping, read a book before going to bed, it will help you sleep better.
When you read, it can also expand your attention span. The reason how it can is because it encourages the brain to think similarly in sequence, and spend more time on building a story rather than rushing through each detail. Also, when we read a novel, we read from left to right, rather than jumping from each sentence to a different one in no order and slowly think about the information in front of us. When you use this time for thinking about the story you’re reading, you are taking the time of reading the many layers and how they connect, which can create longer attention spans, especially in children.