Obama's an Avid Reader - You?

Barak Obama's often spotted carrying a book. He enjoys novels, non-fiction and biographies. Obama's an avid reader. You? Benefits... reading stimulates writing, vocabulary development, speaking and understanding a variety of viewpoints.

Intriguingly, reading has shaped our history, our culture, our civilization, neuroscientist Maryanne Wolfe says.

Reading unleashes your brain's thinking box... Not too surprisingly, reading pushes you to reason at high cognitive levels. Here's what goes on in your brain as you read...

The large mass of white matter, consisting of bundles of fibres, links the white matter of your brain's two cerebral hemispheres. The corpus callosum carries a large number of fibres from one cerebral hemisphere to the other and is the major route of communication between the two hemispheres to control cognitive and motor function.

White Matter Matters in Reading Performance The white matter is basically the wiring in the middle," Dr. Christian Beaulieu, Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering in Alberta, Canada, explains.

"The way I see it, the grey matter is the computers and the white matter is the wiring or the Ethernet cable that connects them all up and lets them communicate."

His research team concentrated on the "wiring" that connects different parts of the brain and observed that measurable differences in the wiring can be found in children... They found that the stronger the connectivity of the white matter "wiring," the better the child's reading ability. Since our brains have remarkable plasticity, as you begin to read more, you build more reading acumen.

Here's my current book queue: The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam, and Your Life as Story: Discovering the "New Autobiography" and Writing Memoir as Literature by Tristine Rainer. Plus, I expect two books in this week's mail.

What's in your current reading queue?

Can You Easily Talk and Drive?

Ever find yourself distracted as you drive and talk business on your cellphone? That's not surprising because your brain cannot easily juggle both. University of South Carolina researchers show that as people prepare to speak or actually speak, they are "four times more distracted than as they listen." Speaking puts far more demands on the brain than listening. Here's why...

"People can tune in or out as needed when listening," contends Dr. Amit Almor, lead researcher. Added to that, he determined, "It's really an attention problem, not really about holding the phone in your hand."

Keep these findings in mind if you conduct business on your cellphone while driving...

• The greater the urge to speak, the greater the distraction from the visual task.
  

• When applied to the visual task of driving, results show that simply using hand-free devices is not very helpful.

• With driving, talking on the phone is very different from talking to someone in the car.

• When someone sits next to you they act as a second set of eyes, and can alert you to things that someone on the other end of your cellphone can't.

Dr. Almor's study really adds weight to earlier Carnegie Mellon studies which show that just listening to a cell phone while driving is a significant distraction, and it causes drivers to commit some of the same types of driving errors that can occur under the influence of alcohol.

This study "used brain imaging to document that listening alone reduces by 37 percent the amount of brain activity associated with driving. This can cause drivers to weave out of their lane, based on the performance of subjects using a driving simulator."

Here're stats that would interest you, next time you're tempted to conduct business as you drive...

Almor’s findings are particularly relevant in light of recent statistics.

The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported in April that 25 percent of all car accidents are caused by distractions. A survey done by Nationwide Mutual Insurance in 2007 indicated that 73 percent of drivers talk on cell phones while driving. Given that cell-phone sales have vaulted to 254 million in February 2008 up from (4.3 million in 1990), according to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, there is good reason for researchers to study the brain and how talking and listening on a cell phone interferes with driving a car.

I have used a Blue Tooth earphone and have engaged in conversation as I was driving so this research was new to me. While I felt I was completely concentrating on my driving, this makes me think twice.

Thoughts?