Researchers observe the brain patterns of literary PhD candidates while they’re reading a Jane Austen novel. The fMRI images suggest that literary reading provides “a truly valuable exercise of people’s brains.”

Pictured above – test subject Matt Langione, a doctoral candidate at UC-Berkeley, reading Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’ in the mock scanning room. The researchers found that blood flow in the brain increases during such leisurely reading, but in different areas of the brain than when the subjects read the novel more closely.

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