If you’re an avid reader, you’ve probably had a moment when your book felt more real than the world around you. Curled in a favorite spot, you may have felt almost as if you were in Narnia, had traveled through middle-earth with Frodo Baggins, or felt Holden Caufield’s adolescent confusion and angst.
Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips frequently had such experiences. She would become so lost in a book that the world around her would feel less real than the world created in the novel she read.
Curious as to how this distraction — or perhaps more accurately, absorption in a book — affected the brain, she decided to conduct a study.
Phillips teamed up with neuroscientists from Stanford University to determine if there were differences in brain activity between, casual, somewhat distracted skimming vs. captivated and engaged reading.
What did they find?