Reading Harry Potter Gives Clues to Brain Activity
Reading Harry Potter Gives Clues to Brain Activity – Reading about Harry Potter’s adventures learning to fly his broomstick activates some of the some of the same regions in the brain we use to perceive real people’s actions and intentions.
In a novel study, scientists who peeked into the brains of people caught up in a good book emerged with maps of what a healthy brain does as it reads. The research reported Wednesday has implications for studying reading disorders or recovery from a stroke.
The team from Carnegie Mellon University was pleasantly surprised that the experiment actually worked. At Carnegie Mellon, eight adult volunteers watched for nearly 45 minutes as each word of Chapter 9 of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was flashed for half a second onto a screen inside the scanner.
The research team analyzed the scans, second by second, and created a computerized model of brain activity involved with different reading processes. The research was published Wednesday by the journal PLoS One.
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