Learning to read in adulthoood changes the brain: study
Astudy of women in India who learned to read in their 30s has revealed the human brain’s incredible capacity to reorganise and change itself. As part of the study, researchers recruited women in India to see what they could learn about the areas of the brain devoted to reading.
At the start of the study, most of the women could not read a word of their mother tongue, Hindi. But after six months of training, the women reached a level comparable to a student in class one.
“This growth is remarkable,” said Falk Huettig from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, lead author of the study in the journal Science Advances. “While it is difficult for us to learn a new language, it appears to be much easier for us to learn to read. The adult brain proves to be astonishingly flexible.”
Researchers found that the exterior of the brain — known as the cortex, which is able to adapt quickly to new challenges — was not the main area where the transformation occurred. Instead, reorganisation took place deep inside the brain, particularly in the brainstem and thalamus, a walnut-sized structure that relays sensory and motor information.
Co-author Michael Skeide, scientific researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, says, “We observed that deep structures in the thalamus and brainstem help our visual cortex filter important information from the flood of visual input even before we consciously perceive it.”
Researchers found that the more signals aligned in the affected brain regions, the better the women’s reading skills became. “These brain systems increasingly fine-tune their communication as learners become more and more proficient in reading,” Skeide added. “This could explain why experienced readers navigate more efficiently through a text.”
The findings could have implications for the treatment of dyslexia.
While it is difficult cult for us to learnn a new language,e, it appears to be much easierer for us to learn to read.ead FALK HUETTIG, RESEARCHER