Clarify the brain structures and fundamental functions of reading

2018/09/26 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Anatomia/Fisiologia

The main field related to reading that neuroscientists already knew, used to introduce information, was not clear its structure and functioning. Now, in the research center on cognition, the brain and BCBL language have found that this field is divided into two parts. According to his study, the back receives visual information and the front is responsible for the lexico-semantic information.

According to Kepa Paz-Alonso, a researcher at BCBL, the whole brain participates in reading, but the access point to information (occipite-temporal ventral cortex) is fundamental: “People who have this affected area have alexia, they are not able to read.”

Although numerous studies on this field have been published in the last 15 years, there was no unified vision. Now they have seen why.“Using the most advanced techniques of neurofiguring that exist today, we have seen that this field is divided into two, one related to perception and another to the lexico-semantic area. That is, the functions are divided into different anatomical structures”, explains Paz-Alonso.

The study focused on the thesis of Garikoitz Lerma-Usabiaga and has been published in the journal PNAS. As a basic research, Paz-Alonso has advanced that it will influence the field of reading, for example, dyslexia.