Good news just in for crime fiction lovers: reading makes you smarter. That’s the conclusion of Global English Editing, which has checked all the relevant facts to support the theory and put them together into a fascinating infographic which you can check out below.

The majority of readers seem to find crime fiction to be therapeutic. The genre provides not only excitement and an escape from the regular world, but a sense of comfort in knowing that although troubling things may be happening in the book, you are safe on the couch in your pyjamas.

Did you also know that reading stories can help you build empathy, boost memory, and strengthen your imagination? Science has shown that stories, regardless of the language it is written in, have a universal ability to stimulate areas in the brain responsible for memory and emotional processing. While you engage in the story, your empathy becomes heightened because you must understand the characters’ personalities, emotions, and motivations. Because you aren’t simply turning on the television and watching images on a screen, your brain works its imagination harder to ‘see’ the story.

Reading stories can activate brain areas responsible for episodic memory recall, understanding emotions and sensory data, long-term memory processing, emotional association and visual memory, decision making and memory recall. Overall, people who read are more interesting, not only because they are smarter and more empathetic, but because they have acquired more worldly knowledge as well as a larger vocabulary. As you continue to enjoy your crime fiction throughout your life, your brain will benefit from the mental stimulation which will help keep away cognitive decline and dementia. Take a look at this infographic put together by Global English Editing. Which crime fiction novel will you read next?