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Novels, regardless of whether or not they are fiction or nonfiction, can have a huge impact on one's life. Stories have the power to inspire or touch people in ways that nothing else can. In a new study, researchers from Emory University examined how stories impacted the brain. They found that reading a novel could lead to changes in the brain that last for a few days.

"Stories shape our lives and in some cases help define a person," neuroscientist Gregory Berns, lead author of the study and the director of Emory's Center for Neuropolicy, said according to Medical Xpress. "We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what they do to it."

For this study, Berns, who worked with Kristina Blaine and Brandon Pye from the Center for Neuropolicy, and Michael Prietula, professor of information systems and operations management at Emory's Goizueta Business School, recruited 21 undergraduate students. The students were instructed to read Robert Harris' novel, Pompeii, which is about the real-life volcanic eruption in ancient Italy. The researchers selected this book because of its strong narrative and thrilling plot.

At the beginning of the study, the students underwent a base-line fMRI scan of their brains at a resting state for five days. During the next nine days, the students were instructed to read around 30 pages per day during the evening. In the morning, the students were given a quiz about the assigned pages followed by an fMRI scan. When the nine days were up, the students underwent five more days of fMRI scans each morning.

"Even though the participants were not actually reading the novel while they were in the scanner, they retained this heightened connectivity," Berns stated. "We call that a 'shadow activity,' almost like a muscle memory."

The researchers also found heightened connectivity in the brain's central sulcus region, which is responsible for sensory motor skills. The researchers concluded that simply reading about a thrilling plot could make the mind feel as if it was going through the same events as the protagonist.

"We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else's shoes in a figurative sense. Now we're seeing that something may also be happening biologically," Berns said. "It remains an open question how long these neural changes might last. But the fact that we're detecting them over a few days for a randomly assigned novel suggests that your favorite novels could certainly have a bigger and longer-lasting effect on the biology of your brain."

The study, "Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Novel on Connectivity in the Brain," was published in Brain Connectivity.