As a computational cognitive neuroscientist who studies reading, we should emphasize that we do not have a clue about how the brain is rewired in reading *more* or even if it is. fMRI studies have been very useful in giving us hints, and much of what Jessica says is true and not a lie. Some fallacies are in this section like "think through complex problems" (no evidence it is reading), "not just more knowledgeable" -- we don't even know how to define that, and "functionally smarter" is essentially made up. We just don't know.
Content is amazingly centralized in different areas of the neocortex. For example, amazingly, the area lit up by reading "The restaurant was full" is going to be the same no matter who you are, what language you speak. Such universal locations for knowledge at such detail is mysterious in how it happens. So she is very right that what you read lights up the areas corresponding to knowledge about that content.
The best description I know about reading is by Carl Sagan. Books are Magic....
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.
But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.
Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs.
Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
-- Carl Sagan quote from Cosmos (ref: https://baos.pub/carl-sagan-believed-books-are-magic-here-is-why-he-was-right-e8d40c8005b5 )
Here is how reading actually works in the brain as far as we know -- which is a long way from actually knowing the details of the computations and the specific benefits of reading in terms of how the brain is changed as a result of reading. What she ascribes to reading is actually because of human natural language (dialogue and listening as well as reading).
But yes, read more. But don't believe the lies and be critical about what you read. And, authors should be responsive to the need for human dialogue about what they write.
