Since children are encouraged to read and often we are told that reading is good for the brain. But what exactly does the reading brain? An international team of neuroscientists has set to give an answer to this question and found that people who have learned to read, whether children or adults, show stronger reactions to the written word in different brain regions. The research was published recently in the journal Science.
Scientists from Belgium, Brazil, France and Portugal, under the direction of the cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, Institut National de la Santé? et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, have set themselves the goal of discovering whether the literacy improves brain function and if it leads, eventually, loss. The researchers measured the brain responses of 63 subjects and Brazilian Portuguese language spoken and written, with images of faces, houses and other tools using functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging, MRI). Altogether 10 volunteers were illiterate, 22 were literate in adulthood and 31 had learned to read in childhood.
The results showed that all showed stronger reactions to the written word in different regions of the brain responsible for processing what we see. Moreover, in subjects literate (but not in those illiterate) the written words have triggered brain activity in regions of the left temporal lobe that respond to spoken language.
