Reddit Reddit reviews Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read

We found 2 Reddit comments about Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read
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2 Reddit comments about Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read:

u/feldup · 2 pointsr/fatlogic

yeah, human evolution is amazing

This guy studies reading and dyxlexia (link below)

He claims hunter gatherers use part of the brain to track animals -
in the modern era this same brain region is being used for reading. I've forgotten if his lab did the brain imaging on hunters themselves or if he was repeating a study from another lab

https://www.amazon.ca/Reading-Brain-New-Science-Read/dp/0143118056

u/hepheuua · 1 pointr/cogsci

haha I understand that feeling.

On the psychology/cognitive science/neuroscience side:

Stanislas Dehaene argues that learning to read rewires the brain by co-opting other capacities and essentially constructing a new neural network dedicated to processing written language. It's an interesting theory and a great book, but a little dense.

Raymond Mar has done a bunch of interesting work on fiction and empathy. Here's a link to most of his papers.

There's some research on how fiction more broadly can increase altruism:

Barraza, J. A., Alexander, V., Beavin, L. E., Terris, E. T., & Zak, P. J. (2015). The heart of the story: Peripheral physiology during narrative exposure predicts charitable giving. Biological Psychology, 105, 138-143. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.01.008

A more philosophical take - Martha Nussbaum on 'reading for life'.

Here are some books that take a bit of a general overview:

Lisa Zunshine - Why We Read

My own area is actually situating a lot of this research in an evolutionary context - looking at how and why we tell stories and what role they have served over longer timeframes. Here are some others that have written on the topic. I disagree with them in quite a few places, and I'm essentially arguing that we need to expand on their accounts, but there's a lot to agree with as well, and they're worth a read:

Brian Boyd - On The Origin of Stories

Ellen Spolsky - The Contracts of Fiction

Jonathon Gottschall - The Storytelling Animal

Let me know if there's any papers/books that you can't get access to, I have them all in PDF format and would be happy to forward you anything you're interested in reading that isn't available to you.

As to why I chose the topic, essentially I have a bit of a generalist educational background: I majored in philosophy, psychology, history/politics and english literature/creative writing as an undergraduate, and did a Master's in cognitive science and philosophy. I'm what you would most definitely refer to as over-educated, and I don't mean that in a good way - I have an Australian equivalent to a student loan that isn't pretty (although still much lower than what it would have cost me in the US!). So, I wanted a way of getting paid to read and think about all the areas I'm interested in - and it turns out writing about the evolution of fiction takes me across a whole range of disciplines and a whole range of research areas, including evolutionary biology/psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, economics, literary theory, etc. That, and I guess I have always disagreed with the idea of art as simply escapism or entertainment and wanted to look at how important it has been, and continues to be, in shaping who we are and where we're going.