Why Reading Books Is Important for the Brain

Experts say the abandonment of book reading may have some unappealing consequences for cognition. "People are clearly reading fewer books now than they used to, and that has to have a cost because we know book reading is very good cognitive exercise," says Ken Pugh, director of research at the Yale-affiliated Haskins Laboratories, which examines the importance of spoken and written language.

Pugh says the process of reading a book involves "a highly variable set of skills that are deep and complex" and that activate all of the brain's major domains. "Language, selective attention, sustained attention, cognition, and imagination  - there's no question reading is going to strengthen all those," he says. In particular, reading novels and works of narrative non-fiction - basically, books that tell a story - train a reader's imagination and aspects of cognition that other forms of reading mostly neglect, he says.

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