Interesting studies were conducted at the University of Buffalo in the USA and the University of Liverpool in the UK. In these studies, the works of important literary figures, such as Shakespeare and T. S. Eliot, were read by participants and their brain patterns were monitored at the same time. According to the results, the parts of the brain that we do not normally use in our daily lives are activated when we read a literary text. This means that our brain feeds on texts based on the imagination. The more a text challenges us, the greater the scope of our thought and the greater the capacity of our brain. Take, for example, a novel. Identification with the characters in a novel enhances our social skills. It improves our ability to build empathy. Moreover, novels psychologically function as therapy. The events we come across in novels prepare us for the events we face in our lives. The academia has identified some novels that affect the human brain in different ways.

Johann von Goethe / The Sorrows of Young Werther (1787)

Jane Austen / Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Nathaniel Hawthorne / The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Gustave Flaubert / Madam Bovary (1856)

George Eliot / Middlemarch (1870)

Leo Tolstoy / Anna Karenina (1877)

Virginia Woolf / Bayan Dalloway (1925)

Toni Morrison / Beloved (1987)

J.M. Coetzee / Disgrace (1999)