Grab a book! Reading regularly can help ward off Alzheimer's, boost your emotional intelligence

By Dr Jyoti Kapoor

EQ is a measure of the ability to identify, use, understand and manage one's own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathise with others, overcome challenges and diffuse conflict. Emotional Intelligence has been acknowledged as a type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others' emotions.

Most basic emotions and their expression are innate but learning plays a major role in modifying them. The environment which includes the home as well as the larger sociocultural milieu affects the cognitive aspects of emotions. This cognitive appraisal of events surrounding the physiological changes that are felt in a given situation determines how an individual responds which finally becomes his/her emotional response.

Emotional intelligence is therefore learnt through observation and experience and thus is ever evolving.

Reading and comprehension involve the brain at multiple levels simultaneously. As one learns to read, one also creates visuals of what’s being read and emotionally responds to them. Therefore a good book has the capacity to make us laugh or cry. We become aware of how we respond to fictional situations and how we would like to act or react. As we compare our response to the response of characters depicted by the author, we evolve a parallel thought process thus modifying emotional reactivity.

- Reading good literature, especially literary fiction enhances the ability to identify and understand other people's emotions and responses in the given circumstances. It serves as an experience as reading allows for use of one's own skills of understanding, interpretation and imagination thus enhancing problem-solving activity.

The research in this area has identified literary fiction as having a greater impact on enhancing empathy and EQ because the scenarios in literary fiction are generally taken from day-to-day circumstances with greater depth of characters and situations compared to popular fiction which is more for thrill and entertainment and is fast-paced.


Reading has been shown to lower the level of beta amyloid protein involved in the development of Alzheimer's. (Image: Agencies)

- From a neuro-developmental perspective, the process of reading enhances brain connectivity and functioning. In research setting, areas of brain showing increased activity included not just the language area in the left side of the brain but areas of autobiographical memory and emotions in the right hemisphere as well. The neurological changes persist even after one stops reading.

- Reading has been shown to lower the level of beta amyloid protein involved in the development of Alzheimer's. The effect can be interpreted as a better memory and cognitive enhancement.

EQ depends on emotional memory which allows for use of past experiences in current scenarios for interpretation and choosing a course of action thus improving our ability to regulate emotional response.

- Reading lowers stress faster and low stress is associated with better ability to connect and empathise with another person.

- Different styles of literature create different patterns in the brain. Poetry boosts memory and relaxation. Metaphors encourage feeling the physical aspects of the metaphors by stimulating touch areas in the brain. Even different texts have different effects making reading a useful tool for neuro-cognitive development at multiple levels.

EI is considered far more important than IQ for success as well as a sense of fulfilment. Enhancing EI through reading is probably the easiest way. So go grab a book, the words will do the work!


—The writer is Senior Consultant, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Paras Hospitals, Gurgaon