Perception, reading, and stress

Reading is a very particular and unnatural activity for the brain, but we can train to do it very well. Recently, I have noticed that reading reduces my stress levels quite effectively and I think it has to do with two factors that lead to automatic adaptations in brain activity. The first is that reading requires focus. The inherent sequential nature of reading’s information flow, which is very different from how we normally perceive the natural environment around us, i.e. as big picture observation punctuated with significant details that pull our attention (too much so if one has an attention disorder; making complexity or change tiresome, or even stressful).

When information is thusly partitioned and sequential, the process of receiving it gets very sensitive to disruption. Even if our eyes read the words and letter, the brain rather activates an internal concept sequence that mirrors the thoughts of the writer in our own consciousness. We are, in a sense, reading someone elses mind when we read a book. But if reading gets interrupted the logical connections in its content gets broken mid-way and we suffer a costly loss of track. Getting back on it requires returning to the words-and-letters level and trying to find where we were, which is difficult precisely because or mind wasn’t really reading the letters in the first place.

To protect against such costly disruptions – and keep us comfortably in the conceptual realm enjoying the story or argument at hand – concentration involves automatically shielding us from disturbances. Almost everything around us is obscured when we read a captivating text, and the reticular organ pulls us out of the flow only when prompted by very strong or surprising sensory input (such as a wasp trying to steal from my beer, apparently!). You have probably noticed yourself how difficult it is to get the attention of someone immersed into a good story?

The other factor that neutralize stress is tempo. When we read, we automatically adjust the bitrate of input to a proper speed at which the brain can activate concept and processes their meaning and implications. ‘Speed reading’ can make us miss the point and slow reading is really frustrating (and difficult). Sometimes we might feel that a text is ‘wordy’. I believe it is because it has a low conceptual density; in essence, that the ratio of text-length to content is low. In any case, under stress, when our minds races too fast in too many directions, reading seem to put us back on a single track and a healthy tempo. So, for me at least, after only half an hour or so of reading, I seem to be better in sync with the world around me.

Anybody else experienced something similar?