Neuroscience of reading

[Aware]

Do we have any neuroscientists around here? Or someone with a bit of knowledge in the matter? Or at least someone experienced in putting knowledge from books to use?

I'm curious about how reading and absorbing theorethical information affects the way we act.

I know that the change of behavior or character requires practice, experience, something that happened to us in the past. Reading is no practice, but it certainly happens.

When I read a book I don't remember everything, but somehow it affects me anyway, even if I don't apply the knowledge consciously. Of course the difference is minor compared to practice, but it exist.

The term reading comprehension comes to mind. I suppose it is the amount of information one can read and immedietly put to use. Is there a scientific explanation behind it?

 

[Colossus]

You'll probably see the term "neuroplasticity" thrown around. Basically in layman's terms it means increasing the number and frequency of inter-neuron connections, which effectively increases your 'processing time' and information recall.

For example, you may not have direct recall of a chapter you read in a textbook about plant biology, but when reading some other material that is peripherally related, certain keywords or the context of a passage may jog your memory and you will be able to recognize information you previously read. This is essentially how I got through graduate school and took over 100 full length timed exams in a year.

 

[dasein]

Not a neuroscientist, but here are some tips I've learned from reading for work and pleasure in the information explosion.

1. Technology makes it very easy to summarize large amounts of data. Cut paste the meat of any other files into a new word file. Then summarize it down to the raw essence, reduce the font to ten pt, margins to .5", and I have been able to get 400 page books into 1-3 pages without losing any of the good stuff. We get so much filler today. Then take the printout and put it into a sheet protector in a binder. The result will be one 1-2" binder with sheet protectors containing the meat of 10-50k pages of important texts. Spend a few hours weekly reviewing that binder and soon enough, you will learn all that permanently. I have one binder for health, fitness and diet, one for motivation, one for general business operations, one for practical DIY skills, one I'm working on for core legal and financial knowledge.

Key principle here is that anything that is worth serious reading is worth compressing and internalizing. Of course not necessary for pleasure reading, just knowledge reading. Spending time merely reading something, when you could be compressing it into meat for later reference is inefficient time spent.

2. The web is your friend. Wiki is good for general facts and links to other sources, just be careful of partisan spin rampant in wiki and cull out bias. Start adding "wiki" and "pdf" to your internet searches and you open the door to fast, compressible information. Every large law, accounting, financial site, entrepreneur, business, industry etc. site has general knowledge files to be compressed in the above way. Most of that knowledge is only partially searchable. So once you find a good site, go all through it culling the knowledge and cut pasting to a summary word file. Private sector > government or other noncompetitive sites, people lose real jobs and money if private sector info is wrong. Once I find a good site, I put it on my browser toolbar until I've culled and compressed it. Use this only personally, the risk is remote, but don't distribute out copyrighted materials as part of your business, your website or your work.

3. Guard your GIGO. We are bombarded by useless, biased marketing type information daily. Much of it is cleverly concealed as knowledge. Try to cultivate a discerning eye about what is really factual, useful and learnworthy versus junk.

This isn't really on topic, but thought it would be a good place to add these simple tips that have been very useful to me. Nothing new here, and little reinventing the wheel, mostly common sense. Good luck.

 

[Aware]

I appreciate you input, but I'm more interested in how reading or processing information affects behavior.

I wonder if learned beliefs, rules and techniques have to be applied consciously to have an effect or the information processing itself has some impact.