Snuggling up next to your kids to read them a bedtime story isn’t just helping you bond with your little one.

We’ve known for a while that reading to children is a great way to help kids learn how to read for themselves.

But recent research also suggests that storytime has other benefits as well. Here are four of the main reasons why reading to children — especially when you do it regularly — could be crucial:

1. It stimulates parts of the brain associated with visual processing.

A recent study highlighted by the New York Times found increased activity in the areas of children’s brain associated with processing images, suggesting that even when kids aren’t reading themselves, they are picturing the places they’re hearing about.

“When kids are hearing stories, they’re imagining in their mind’s eye,” John S. Hutton, a clinical research fellow at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the lead author of the paper, told the Times.

2. It’s different than just talking to them.

Another study suggests that reading aloud to children starting when they’re infants exposes them to more words than they might pick up from conversation alone. The study also suggested that reading aloud provides them with a better picture of a variety of sentence structures and vocabulary.

3. It may boost their ability to process information.

A recent study based on data from 4-and-5-year-old Australian children found that — even when they controlled for factors like their parents’ income and education levels — kids whose parents said they read to them at least 6 days a week scored higher on national tests designed to measure understanding and comprehension than those whose parents said they read to them just once or twice a week or less. The differing results appeared to hold steady roughly until the kids reached age 10.

4. It may help them problem solve.

In a survey of 9-month-olds in Ireland, researchers found that children whose mothers said they read and talked to them “often” or “always” up until that age performed better on a private questionnaire used by the University of California San Francisco and the University of Oregon than those whose mums said they read to them “rarely,” “never,” or “not at all,” even when controlling for mother’s income and education levels.

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