/lit/ - Literature

Here's some scientific results, about the brain but not about the social behaviours (isolation) associated with reading.

This guy is legit:
http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2010/11/how-reading-rewires-brain
Interview on another site:
http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2013/Inside_the_Letterbox__How_Literacy_Transforms_the_Human_Brain/
> Exactly as predicted, we also observed a small but significant cortical competition effect, precisely at the site of the letterbox area. For the first time, our study revealed which shapes triggered a response at this site prior to learning to read. In illiterates, faces and objects caused intense activity in this region—and, strikingly, the response to faces diminished with literacy. It was highest in illiterates, and quickly dropped in ex-illiterates and literates.

>Although face recognition is displaced in the cortex, it seems to be just as efficient in literate people as in illiterate people. In fact, it may even be more efficient in literate people. In a test of holistic perception, where subjects were asked to compare the top halves of two faces while avoiding any interference from their bottom halves, literate people outperformed illiterate people, suggesting that the former had learned to focus their attention better and in a more flexible manner.