The book - Robert Harris' Pompeii - was given to 19 people to read.
They were scanned every day, over 19 consecutive days, to assess the brain's resting state: in other words, what it's doing when it's doing nothing in particular.
The results, published in the journal Brain Connectivity, showed that there were changes in the brain's resting state that persisted after participants had finished reading the novel.
The lead author, Gregory Berns, explained:
"Even though the participants were not actually reading the novel while they were in the scanner, they retained this heightened connectivity. We call that a 'shadow activity,' almost like a muscle memory."The heightened connectivity was seen in the areas of the brain associated with receptivity to language: the left temporal cortex. However, these changes in resting brain state were relatively short-lived.
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