A full look at what’s going on in the brain when we read

Reading is a very precious competence that allows humans to acquire new knowledge, continue education and finish a wide range of real tasks. Many past studies of psychology and neuroscience have aimed to better understand the neuronal foundations of reading and complex processes through which the human brain gives meaning to written texts,

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences have recently examined many of these previous studies to shed light on global brain activity models associated with reading. Their article, published in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviewsoffers a complete view of the regions and brain processes involved in different types of reading.

“Literacy provides the key to social contact, education and employment, and considerably influences well-being and mental health,” wrote Sabrina Turker, Beatrice Fumagalli and their colleagues in their article. “Summarizing 163 studies, this meta-analysis based on coordinates confirms the importance of the regions of the left hemispherical language and the cerebellum through reading tasks.”

As part of their recent study, Turker, Fumagalli and their colleagues analyzed the results of more than 150 studies that examined people’s brain activation models while reading a wide range of texts in different alphabetical languages, using various imaging techniques. In these studies, the participants were invited to read letters, pseudo-words (that is to say, words that mean nothing), words, sentences and whole texts.

“We have found a specific treatment of treatment for the letter, words, sentences and text reading exclusively in hemispherical left areas,” wrote the researchers.

“The sub-regions in the left-in-law gyrus have shown a differential commitment to reading words and pseudoword, while sub-region in the left temporo-occipital cortex showed a differential commitment for words and sentences.”

By examining the previous literature, the researchers discovered brain areas which are generally activated during reading and regions which specifically contribute to the treatment of letters, words, pseudo-words and whole texts. More specifically, they found that reading letters activated a single group of neurons in the left occipital cortex (OTC) while reading words, sentences and whole texts has also activated various other regions.

In addition, Turker, Fumagalli and their colleagues revealed the differences in brain activation when people read aloud, also called manifest reading, and reading silently in their minds, known as the secret reading. For example, they found that reading aloud often also activates the brain regions linked to movement and sound processing.

“The direct comparison of manifest and secret reading has revealed a higher probability of activation in hearing regions and engines during the first, and a more coherent dependence on the regions of multiple demand during the latter,” the researchers wrote.

“Finally, the silent reading of words and pseudoword (explicit reading) has produced a more coherent activation in orbito-fonts, cerebellar and left-wing cortexs compared to lexical decisions (implicit reading). Lexical decisions, in contrast, have shown more coherent bilateral recruitment of frontal and lower island regions.”

The results of the study study of this research team give a global vision of the neural architectures involved in different types of reading, which could shed light on future research to further explore the unique involvement of these architectures. Finally, this work could also shed light on the neural processes that differ in people who have difficulties during reading, such as those diagnosed with dyslexia or other learning disabilities, which could, in turn, help to design interventions to support these people.

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