Fact checked by Nick Blackmer
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/Health-GettyImages-637884888-e2ba3fd7bb8143df9fccb8ab4031675e.jpg "Shot of a mature woman sitting on her sofa listening to music on a digital tablet")
- Audiobooks are becoming more popular, raising the question of whether listening offers the same brain benefits as reading.
- Reading generally engages a broader network of brain regions than listening.
- Still, your level of engagement and how consistently you consume challenging content matter more than format.
A growing body of evidence suggests that reading can help prevent cognitive decline and boost brain health as we age. But with audiobooks becoming increasingly popular and fewer Americans reading for pleasure, it’s worth asking: Does listening to a story give your brain the same benefits as reading one? Here's what experts think.
How Reading and Listening Affect the Brain
Both reading and listening stimulate the brain, activating many of the same language-processing networks involved in comprehension and meaning making, according to Chelsey Bollinger, PhD, an associate professor of literacy education at James Madison University. However, the two activities differ in one key way.
Reading “engages visual processing systems and areas involved in word recognition and decoding,” Bollinger said. “Listening bypasses this step, allowing the brain to focus directly on language comprehension.”
In other words, both activities require people to understand and interpret language, but reading engages a broader network of brain regions, she said.
So, Does That Mean Reading Is Better For the Brain?
Not necessarily. It’s true that if you’re equally as engaged in reading a book and listening to one, reading may have a very slight edge for brain health, according to Amit Sachdev, MD, medical director of the Neurology and Ophthalmology Clinical Trials Unit at Michigan State University.
“Reading often proves the more reliable method for relaying information, sparking imagination, and exercising brain connections,” he said.
But experts stressed that how engaged you are with the material matters more than the format itself. “The most important factor,” Bollinger said, “is often the level of attention and engagement the individual brings to the experience.”
Reading may lend itself to better engagement and retention because it’s typically a slower, more active experience, allowing readers to pause, revisit a passage, and reflect on what they’ve learned, noted Davide Cappon, PhD, director of neuropsychology at Tufts Medical Center. With audiobooks, on the other hand, there’s a bigger risk of falling into passive listening mode and “not actively trying to comprehend or encode more deeply a passage you hear,” said Douglas Scharre, MD, a professor of neurology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine.
Still, it’s possible to become just as captured by an audiobook as a print book—or even more so in some cases, particularly if you have eye or visual processing issues or if hearing the speaker’s vocal inflection and emotion enhances the story. In that instance, audiobooks can “offer meaningful depth that print text simply cannot match,” Cappon said.
In addition to engagement, the other crucial factor is choosing the format you enjoy the most, since that’s the one you’re most likely to stick with. As Bollinger noted, the best choice is one a person can maintain over time—meaning that listening to audiobooks regularly is likely doing more for the brain than someone reading books only occasionally.
Cappon agreed, saying he would be “much more concerned about whether someone is regularly engaging their mind than whether the words arrive through their eyes or their ears.”
“From a brain health perspective,” he continued, “the most important thing is staying intellectually curious and consistently engaging with meaningful content.”
