Workout Your Brain with Books!

(This article first appeared on the awesome website, Sixty & Me.)

Are you one of those people who, no matter how much you are enjoying it, simply cannot wait to finish the book you are reading when another interesting title catches your eye? Me too. Unfortunately, a busy schedule limits my dedicated reading time. So what’s a bibliophile to do?

Simple. I read multiple books at the same time.

Some of my friends exclaim, “I don’t know how you can do that! If I tried to read more than one book at a time, my brain would explode.” Well, since I do perform this brain-multitasking feat on a daily basis, I thought I’d do some research to determine whether it really was hurting—or helping—my cognitive abilities as I age.

Information, other than individual opinions on the subject, was difficult to find. Of course, any search including the term “multitasking” brings up a plethora of negative articles claiming how dangerous this can be, like texting while driving. “Split-focus” was another term I came across often, which, it is claimed, reduces focus and productivity. I even found several bloggers who claimed it was a disgrace to “cheat” one, wonderful book out of your full attention. I also learned a brand-new term for the habit: “poly-reader,” as opposed to a monogamous or serial reader.

Wow. I didn’t know reading more than one book at a time placed me in the non-monogamous category. So…I’m cheating on the first book with the second and third? Or is it more like polygamy, where all the books willingly consent to share my attention?

Then there’s the question of multiple media: print book vs. eBook vs. audiobook. Can you mix these without the dose becoming lethal?

I say these theories are hogwash. First of all, I not only have at least two or three print books on my nightstand at all times, but I also have a Kindle app on my phone (I know, this is really bad for my eyesight. But that’s a subject for another blog…). Since I’m also a huge fan of audiobooks, I virtually never listen to music on my car radio. I’m always listening to a book.

Interestingly, there has been some scientific research on how the brain responds to reading a physical vs. and eBook. In this 2009 article by Jonah Lehrer on ScienceBlogs, I learned that different parts of the brain respond differently to different types of text. According to Lehrer, “one of the most interesting findings regarding literacy and the human cortex is the fact that there are actually two distinct pathways activated by the sight of letters.”

Researcher Stanislas Dehaene studied people’s brain waves under fMRI, and concluded that text in a familiar format, i.e. the printed page, stimulates the ventral reading pathway. This allows the reader to decipher and understand the content effortlessly. When the format changes, however, as text on an eReader or computer screen, another part of the brain is triggered: the dorsal pathway. This is the more simplistic, basic process, and the way we all learned how to read—by sounding out the syllables.

In layman’s terms, when reading a physical book vs. an eBook, the words are transported into our brains via two completely different pathways.

So, how can this be bad? We exercise our bodies in multiple ways, don’t we? It seems to me that exercising our brains in multiple ways can do nothing but help keep our minds in shape—and sharp.

Then we move on to the third medium: audiobooks. Now we have a whole different set of cognitive processes going on. I found some sources that claimed listening to an audiobook vs. reading one was “cheating.” The foundation for this theory is that listening turns an active process into a passive one. But the author of this article on The Science of Us, Melissa Dahl, disagrees. She cites this: “a study from science writer Olga Khazan, noted in 2011, (that) a “1985 study found listening comprehension correlated strongly with reading comprehension.” So, no: Listening vs. reading isn’t cheating. It’s just absorbing the information via a different sensory route.

Again, how can this be bad? By listening to an audiobook, we are utilizing yet another part of our brain. Exercising it. Exercise = good.

But now, the real question: what about us poly-readers? For those of us who not only partake of multiple forms of reading material, but more than one at the same time? Are we breaking some moral code? Are we totally overloading our brains and running the risk of burning out a neural pathway?

I don’t think so, and neither does Eddie Wharton, as he claims on his Working Theory blog. Most of the books Wharton reads are nonfiction, and he claims that reading more than one at a time has had three distinct and unexpected benefits, namely:

1. He enjoys reading more.
2. He finds himself “stumbling on new insights.”
3. He “progress(es) through them all slower. The books have more time to bounce off of different life situations.”

And finally, in this wonderful article on AgileLifestyle.net, author Tony Khuon describes this kind of voracious reading as “more like a superpower.” Since 2012, he has consistently reached his goal of 150 books in one year. He recommends, when reading books in parallel, to select three different kinds of books, i.e., a genre novel, a literary work, and a nonfiction title.

That is exactly what I do.

The book(s) on my bedside table are nonfiction, craft books that help me to improve the novels I write. The book on my Kindle app is a genre fiction, usually one a fellow author has asked me to read and review. The audiobook booming out from my car’s speakers on my commute is usually a literary title, or a classic.

I turn sixty in just a few short weeks. So far this year, I’ll bet I’ve “consumed” almost a hundred books in their various formats, though I haven’t kept count. Do I feel sharper, and smarter, and more motivated? Yes, indeedy I do. I walk, do yoga, and ride a horse to exercise my body, and I read—profusely and diversely—to exercise my brain.

Are you monogamous or a poly-reader? Do you enjoy books in multiple formats, or primarily one? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

~~~

Claire Gem is an award-winning author of contemporary romance, women’s fiction, & supernatural suspense. You can find out more about her & her work at her website or on her Amazon Author Page.

The Color of Our Dreams

Do you remember your dreams? There are people who claim they don’t dream at all, though it’s much more likely that they just don’t remember them. If you do, tell me . . . are they in color or black and white?

Odd question? Not really. My husband always marvels at how I describe my complicated and sometimes very bizarre dreams in vivid color. That’s how I experienced them, but he can’t begin to imagine it. He claims that when he does (rarely) remember his dreams, that they unfolded in black and white.

Now, there a fifteen year age difference between us. Born in the late 1950s, I do remember our first television set as being black and white. But it wasn’t long before a color set replaced it. For my husband, radio was his family’s entertainment for a good part of his childhood, and of course, their first television set was black and white. He was born in 1943, and graduated high school early, at age sixteen. Color TV sets did not become commercially viable until he was already headed for college.

Does this have an effect on how we dream? A study from 2008 suggests that it does. In this article in The Telegraph by Richard Alleyne, he states:

Research from 1915 through to the 1950s suggested that the vast majority of dreams are in black and white but the tide turned in the sixties, and later results suggested that up to 83 per cent of dreams contain some colour.

An extensive study by Dundee University psychology student Eva Murzyn concluded that a human’s ability to dream develops between the ages of 3 and 10. Her results correlate: those under 25 claim to dream in color, while study participants over the age of 55 say they dream mostly in black and white. Even though they have been watching color television and films for a large percentage of their lives.

How about you? What color are your dreams?

Claire Gem is an multi-published, award-winning author of nonfiction and fiction. You can find out more about her and her work at her Amazon Author Page or  Website.

 

Music, Science, & Romance

The music of love. The love of music. Nothing gets you swooning like hearing a favorite song on the radio, or while sitting in a restaurant—or anywhere—during a moment with someone special. Is this just imaginary romanticism talking? Science says no.

In my endeavor to come up with a subtitle for my third series (yes, third one this year), I’ve been doing searches studying the connections between music, science, and romance. I was spurred on by a line from one of the reviews from the first title, The Phoenix Syndrome, that described it as “a captivating story of science, music, intimacy, and love.” (Thank you, Nikki T., for your enlightening, five-star review) The reviewer also suggested, as I had been urged by multiple other sources, that there should be a sequel.

Well, there will be. But first I need to explore—and capture—the apparent “magic” I created (unwittingly) by combining three seemingly unrelated entities: music, science, and romance.

So, I went surfing. I came across a 2012 article on CNN.com by Dorrine Mendoza that blew me away. She describes a Spotify survey that concluded music may be as sexually arousing as touch. Mendoza states, “Respondents said music playing in the background is 40% more likely to turn them on than the touch or feel of their partner.”

The study’s author, music psychologist Daniel Mullensiefen, determined the top two songs winning this esteemed designation were the theme from Dirty Dancing, Time of My Life, and Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing. Mullensiefen states that “music activates the same pleasure centers of the brain that respond to rewards such as food, drugs or sex.”

Hmm. I guess there is something to this after all.

Of course, I’ve always known music as a strong emotional trigger. I’m that annoying person who turns up the radio when a favorite song comes on and belts it out at the top of my lungs—no matter who’s in the car. I have music around me all the time—all the time—thanks to Pandora and to my car’s Sirius radio. When I write, I adjust the music to the tone of the scene I am writing. I actually grew up in a musically inclined family, as all three of my brothers were involved in numerous bands in their younger years.

How many people can say they know every, single, lyric to every, single, Beatles song ever recorded? That would be me.

I’ve been calling The Phoenix Syndrome a “rockstar romance” because the hero is a drummer in a heavy metal band. But it’s more than that. The heroine is involved in scientific research, and becomes an unlucky casualty of side effects from a drug her lab is testing. She and my drummer boy fall in love. So, there it is: music, science, and romance. I believe there’s even more to the magic of the connection than that.

When I wrote the part just prior to the actual meeting of hero and heroine, I got so swept up in its emotional intensity that I went into a sort of writer’s trance. I finished writing the scene in tears. It describes the hero, during a cancer benefit concert in memory of his late ex-wife, telling the entire story of their journey—with nothing more than drums. And I believe this scene may well have set the stage in my book for connecting at least two of the three elements: music and love. Here’s an excerpt:

Tristan commenced a drum solo like none I’d ever imagined. I remained transfixed in an emotional coma throughout the entire ten minutes, my eyes riveted to this amazing man. A man whose passion spoke to a deeper, secret part of me I thought had dried up and died long ago. In a language of rhythm only a musician could fully understand, Tristan told the beautiful, sad story of his brief time with a woman he loved from the depths of his soul.

At first, the soft pattering of sticks on snare and toms and triangle expressed a playful, bright beginning. Gradually, cymbals and bass drum added substance, growing into a symphony of pure percussion. When he attacked the crash symbols, it was clear this crescendo symbolized the blinding, glorious blossoming of their love. But the heady high didn’t last nearly long enough.

Darker tones crept in, a rumble starting low from dual bass drums, quickly strengthening until they shook the air, reaching deep into my chest with palpable vibration. Ominous, foreboding. The cancer—Serpent C—had made its insidious presence known. A shiver ran between my shoulder blades, and fresh tears stung my eyes. How can this man tell a passionate love story with no notes, no melody, no lyrics? Yet he was, and the tale unfolded as vividly as if I were witnessing it on a screen.

In an unbounded crusade of drums and cymbals, Tristan expressed how they had waged the battle, together. Two hands, two feet, working together in perfect synchrony. But the beat maintained by one hand gradually faltered, fading, even as the other struggled to carry the rhythm for both. We all knew how this was to end. She was losing.

Finally, with stuttered, rapidly weakening pulses, one stick shuddered briefly on the snare before lying, lifeless, across the surface.

For a moment of shocked silence, the rhythm died.

But a single heartbeat played on, softly at first, then growing stronger. One bass drum thudded, steady, hypnotic, but tragically, alone.

It was then I realized the story had reached beyond my musician’s heart. Everyone around me felt the passion in this solo.

~~~

Is there a connection between music, science, and romance? I believe so. And I have faith in the magic of this connection to guide me toward writing the next musically-themed romance with a scientific twist. After all, the root word for music is “muse,” is it not?

I’m on the hunt for a fitting subtitle for a series featuring the magical connection between these three elements.

Suggestions are welcome.

You can read more about The Phoenix Syndrome on Amazon, and view the book trailer on YouTube.

~~~

Claire Gem writes intensely emotional, contemporary romance about “strong women, starting over ~ redefining romance.” Visit her at her Website or Amazon Author Page.