Grammar Girl here, this week you get a bonus show because I didn't want to make you wait

a whole week to hear the second part of how literature changes your brain.

Also, I'm not big on celebrating milestones, but this is Grammar Girl episode number 400,

so I do want to say thanks for listening and making it possible for me to do Grammar

Girl for all these years.

You may remember that last week, in part 1, Ellen Hendrickson, our new savvy psychologist,

wrote about a study that showed reading just a little bit of literary fiction, not just

any fiction, but literary fiction, caused readers to do better on tests that measured

empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence.

Well in addition to honing our social abilities, it turns out that fiction also leaves its

mark on the brain itself.

In a different study from Emory University, researchers tracked the brain activity of

research participants as they all read the same novel, Pompeii by Robert Harris, over

nine consecutive days.

It worked like this.

Before the participants started reading the novel, they came in for five mornings in a row

to lie in a brain scanner.

These scans allowed the scientists to establish a baseline.

In other words, these were the before measurements of their brains.

Then every night for nine nights, the participants were asked to read a section of the novel, and

every morning, for the next nine mornings, their brains were scanned to see where blood

flow was activated.

...