![the brain 8 review the brain 8 review](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/26/a0/34/26a0340373b801104b26e9b5912e83ac.jpg)
So the real goal is to figure out how to preserve what we have in deep reading and be able to exert that at will.įocused reading is so important, and I’m just as guilty as everyone. What is the best medium? There are certainly going to be more than two mediums, and some will be far more visual or kinesthetic. My proposal is for a “bi-literate brain.” We need to train children to evaluate what is before them. I think we need more research to understand what it would take for every person to have the ability to switch purposefully and know what they are doing when they choose to read something in different modes. My very simplistic, reductionist, qualitative study of myself was of a person who had been steeped in literature and whose motivation was at the highest level. The research is beginning, but it’s by no means able to answer that question. How long does it take to “return,” so to speak? You said that after two weeks of focused reading, you felt like your old reading self. It’s an idea I call “cognitive patience.” I believe we are all becoming unable to take the time to be patient because skimming has bled over into most of our reading. People like you and me who spend six to 12 hours a day on a screen are led to use the skimming mode even when we know we should use a more concentrated, focused mode of reading. It’s not zero-sum, but we have grown used to skimming. This is a question that requires a very careful attempt at explanation. Why is it zero-sum, though? Surely it’s good to be able to skim when needed. The digital medium affordance rewards and advantages fast processing at the cost of the slower processes that build our very important critical, analytical, and empathetic processes.
![the brain 8 review the brain 8 review](https://media.springernature.com/lw150/springer-static/cover/journal/429/226/8.jpg)
They’re the basis for going beyond that initial short circuit of decoding the information and understanding it at a very basic level. And to the extent that a digital medium is going to require us to process large amounts of information very quickly, it will diminish from the time we have for slower processing work.Īnd these slower processes are deep learning, the ones that are more cognitively challenging. The fact that a circuit is plastic is both its beautiful strength and its Achilles’ heel. So what’s changing now with technology? How is that affecting our circuits? The first circuits are very basic - for decoding letters as we’re learning to read - but everything we read builds upon itself. And then something miraculous happens: the circuit builds upon itself. You can have one for each different language, like English or Chinese or Hebrew. The beauty of the circuit for functions like literacy is its plasticity. Rather, it makes new connections among older networks, and that whole collection of networks becomes a circuit.
![the brain 8 review the brain 8 review](https://d3i71xaburhd42.cloudfront.net/f5f2310710e7315efffdf271fcb14d6bc56a1367/3-Figure1-1.png)
So when we have a new cognitive function, like literacy, it doesn’t have a preset network. When we have any function, whether it’s language or vision or cognitive functions like memory, we aren’t dealing with a straight line to the brain that says “This is what I do.” The brain builds a network of connections, a network of neurons that have a particular role in that function. Throughout the book, you talk about the idea of “circuits” in the brain that affect how we read and process information. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Reader, Come Home is about, as its subtitle states, “the reading brain in a digital world.” The Verge spoke to Wolf about how technology is changing the brain, what we lose when we lose deep attention, and what to do about it. And Wolf, who previously wrote Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, is horrified that this is what has happened to her ability to concentrate. The UCLA neuroscientist, a great lover of literature, tries to read Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game, an old favorite, only to realize that she finds him boring and too complex. For anyone who has ever been a reader, there’s much to sympathize with in Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home.