Do you ever feel mentally sharper after reading high literature? Philip Davis, an English professor at the University of Liverpool, does–particularly after reading works by William Shakespeare. The way that the Bard structured lines–what Davis calls the “functional shift”–seems to prime the mind. Davis wanted to know if this was a scientifically verifiable phenomenon. So several years ago, he asked people to read lines while hooked up to electroencephalography (EEG) equipment: