Want to boost your children's brain? Start reading books to them regularly!

New York: Parents, if you want to boosts your children's brain then please take out time and read books to them regularly. A new research has found that engaging with kids while reading books to them gives their brain a cognitive boost.

Accroding to the study, an important point to note is that while reading to children has many benefits, simply speaking the words aloud may not be enough to improve cognitive development in preschoolers.

The findings reinforce the value of "dialogic reading," where the child is encouraged to actively participate.

Lead author of the study John Hutton, a pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Centre in the US, "The takeaway for parents in this study is that they should engage more when reading with their child, ask questions, have them turn the page, and interact with each other."

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) found significantly greater brain activation in four-year-old children who were more highly engaged during story listening, suggesting a novel improvement mechanism of engagement and understanding.

Hutton said,"In turn, this could fuel brain activation -- or 'turbocharge' the development of literacy skills, particularly comprehension, in preschool-aged children."

The study involved functional MRI scans of 22 girls, age 4, to explore the relationship between engagement and verbal interactivity during a mother-child reading observation and neural activation and connectivity during a story listening task.

Children exhibiting greater interest in the narrative showed increased activation in right-sided cerebellar areas of the brain, thought to support cognitive skill acquisition and refinement via connection to language, association and executive function areas.

Hutton said,"Our findings underscore the importance of interventions explicitly addressing both parent and child reading engagement, including awareness and reduction of distractions such as cellphones, which were the most common preventable barrier that we observed."

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

(With IANS inputs)