These color-coded maps of the brain show the semantic similarities during listening (top) and reading (bottom). (Credit: Fatma Deniz)

If you don’t have time to sit and read a physical book, is listening to the audio version considered cheating? To some hardcore book nerds, it could be. But new evidence suggests that, to our brains, reading and hearing a story might not be so different.

In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers from the Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley sca