The Huffington Post – Catherine Pearson
“Pediatricians often recommend parents routinely read aloud to their young children. Now, for the first time, researchers have hard evidence that doing so activates the parts of preschoolers’ brains that help with mental imagery and understanding narrative — both of which are key for the development of language and literacy. “There have been a good number of studies that have [found] empirical evidence that reading to kids does have an impact on things such as literacy and oral language readiness,” Dr. Thomas DeWitt, director of the division of general and community pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, told The Huffington Post. “But prior to this study, we really have not been able to [answer], ‘Does it have an impact biologically on brain function?'” In the study, which will be published in the August 10 issue of Pediatrics, researchers looked at the brains of 19 3- to 5-year-olds using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. Researchers scanned the children’s brains while they listened recordings of a woman reading stories, as well as while they listened to background noise, in order to see how their brains responded when faced with different types of stimulation.”(more)