Summary: A pioneering functional neuroimaging study provided the first neurological evidence detailing how reading mediums alter story comprehension. The research compares how the brain processes narrative arcs when read on paper versus digital tablets.
By measuring localized brain blood flow via functional MRI (fMRI) scanners, investigators demonstrated that paper reading provides stable spatial and tactile cues that allow the brain to organize and retrieve complex story information with significantly less cognitive effort.
Key Facts
- The Medium Comprehension Debate: While e-readers and tablets are ubiquitous, neuroscientists have long debated whether digital screens impact deep reading comprehension, narrative integration, or long-term memory retention.
- The Two-Part Manga Assay: Researchers used a specialized two-part manga story split across two protagonists’ perspectives, using the medium’s rich visual narratives and pictorial data to facilitate scene comprehension outside the scanner.
- The Goggle Imaging Protocol: Because massive MRI magnets block electronic tablets from entering scanning rooms, participants read the first half of a story outside on paper or a tablet, then read the second half inside the scanner using specialized LCD goggles.
- The Digital Processing Delay: While both test groups answered story questions accurately, individuals who initially read the opening half on a tablet took significantly longer to answer demanding questions that required combining details from both halves of the story.
- Frontal Region Efficiency: Brain scans revealed that during the second half of the story, participants who started on paper showed reduced activation in frontal language-related brain regions associated with linguistic and narrative integration.
- The Effortless Organization Hypotheses: This reduced frontal activation suggests that paper allows the human brain to organize contextual flow and storylines with less mental effort, reducing later processing demands during recall.
- The Tactile Cue Advantage: Principal investigator Professor Kuniyoshi Sakai notes that paper’s advantage lies in stable spatial and tactile cues that digital screens lack, with plans to extend the research to compare handwriting against keyboard typing.
Source: University of Tokyo
A new study by researchers at the University of Tokyo explores whether reading manga on paper or on a tablet changes how the brain understands and remembers stories.
Participants first read the opening half of a two-part manga story either on paper or on a tablet. Later, while inside an MRI scanner, they read the second half through LCD goggles and answered questions about the story. Brain scans taken during the reading and questioning showed differences in activity depending on which medium they had just read.
People who first read the opening half of the stories on a tablet took longer to answer more demanding questions that required combining information from both halves than those who first read it on paper. This research could impact educational decisions or even hardware and software related to digital reading.
For as long as e-readers have been on the market, there has been some debate about the potential benefits and drawbacks, including whether they can impact aspects of reading or comprehension. As a neuroscientist focused on language study, Professor Kuniyoshi Sakai from the Department of Basic Science has often pondered these things and was recently approached by a manga publisher in Japan to investigate the matter experimentally. Together with his team, they sought to find out how paper versus tablet reading could impact reading comprehension on a neurological level.
“We assembled a test group and gave them all a reading task, then some questions to answer,” said Sakai. “Participants were given the same manga to read, a special story split into two protagonists’ perspectives. The questions included simple ones and complex ones, the latter of which required comprehension of both parts of the story. But the first story was given to participants on different mediums, paper or e-readers.
During questioning, we measured brain activations by using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. This method is called a functional MRI (fMRI). The fMRI technique actually measures the amount of local blood flow in the brain reflecting neuronal activity in a particular region. We found some interesting differences in activity between the two test groups.”
Sakai and his team found that participants answered questions accurately under both conditions, but those who first read the opening half of the manga on a tablet took longer to answer the more demanding questions requiring integration of information from both halves of the story. Brain scans also revealed differences in activity depending on whether participants initially read on paper or tablet.
During reading of the second half inside the scanner, participants who first read on paper showed reduced activation in frontal language-related brain regions associated with linguistic and narrative integration. The findings suggest that reading on paper may allow the brain to organize story information with less effort, reducing later processing demands.
“This is the first time that a neuroscientific investigation has revealed a specific difference in brain activity between readers of either paper or screens. It’s a fascinating result, but it was tricky to devise this experiment.
“When comparing a paper book and an electronic tablet, we cannot bring the latter device into the scanning room because the scanner is a huge magnet. So instead, participants first read the opening half of the story either on paper or on a tablet outside the scanner and later read the second half inside the scanner using LCD goggles,” said Sakai.
“The same results would likely be obtained for reading novels, because storylines and contextual flow are basically the same between manga, novels and other written material. One important advantage of using manga stories in our tests was that manga has visual narratives, which provide rich pictorial information that facilitates the comprehension of scenes.”
While the exact reasons for the results are an ongoing matter of study, the team suggests that, at least at present, the advantage of paper might be that it provides stable spatial and tactile cues that digital devices don’t. These cues may help the brain organize narrative information more effectively. But Sakai and his team have a few more ideas to investigate too.
“Using a similar method, we are now examining the effects of writing by hand or with a keyboard. This would be a natural extension of comparing paper and electronic devices,” said Sakai. “The advantage of paper is not only about memory, attention and emotional engagement, but about language and thought because it involves careful reading and thinking processes.”
Key Questions Answered:
A: Because manga combines text with rich visual narratives. Professor Kuniyoshi Sakai chose this medium because the pictorial information helps the brain easily reconstruct scenes, though the team notes the exact same integration results apply to traditional novels and text documentation.
A: By providing permanent spatial and tactile anchors. Turning physical pages provides the brain with stable structural cues that screens cannot replicate, allowing your internal language networks to organize plot lines and context with far less effort.
A: It showed a clear processing bottleneck in frontal language regions. When tablet readers faced complex questions that required integrating clues from both halves of the story, their frontal circuits had to work harder and took longer to process the answers compared to paper readers.
Editorial Notes:
- This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
- Journal paper reviewed in full.
- Additional context added by our staff.
About this neuroscience and reading research news
Author: Rohan Mehra
Source: University of Tokyo
Contact: Rohan Mehra – University of Tokyo
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Manga reading on paper vs. digital devices: Prospective effects on core and supportive integration processes in the brain” by Keita Umejima, Yuki Sunada, and Kuniyoshi L. Sakai. PLOS One
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0349778
Abstract
Manga reading on paper vs. digital devices: Prospective effects on core and supportive integration processes in the brain
Reading on paper reportedly improves story comprehension compared to its digital version, although the underlying neuroscientific mechanisms remain unclear. We used a format of Japanese manga stories as visual narratives told in halves, each of which depicted the same events from the different perspectives of two protagonists.
We examined how the medium used to read the first halves, either on a paper book (Paper preparatory condition) or on an electronic tablet (Tablet preparatory condition), facilitated reading of the second halves for the memorized stories, which they read on an electronic display with continuous empathy ratings.
Magnetic resonance scanning was conducted during the latter reading and during answering two sets of questions: Set 1 that could be answered after reading the first half alone, and Set 2 that required comprehension from both halves.
Behavioral results showed prospective effects of reading manga stories on a paper book or an electronic tablet, such that the response times were prolonged in Set 2 for the Tablet condition.
By comparing the results of Sets 1 and 2 with correct answers for each story, we found significant response time differences for the Tablet condition alone. Moreover, for the Paper condition, activations in the left frontal regions significantly decreased while reading the second halves, and those in the right frontal regions also decreased in Set 1.
Furthermore, core left frontal activations were highest in Set 2 for the Tablet condition, while supportive right frontal activations correlated with individual accuracy rates in Set 2 for the Tablet condition, indicating that excessive integration processes support improved performances required by correct answers.
The present results demonstrate stronger prospective effects of reading on paper books, such that linguistic and narrative-structural integration processes are facilitated and led to saved excessive activations.
