Learning to read causes deeper changes than those foreseen in the brain

2017/05/24 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Anatomia/Fisiologia
• Biologia

A study with non-literate adults has shown that learning to read causes more changes in the brain than expected.

Learning to read creates new connections in the brain. The brain must convert the letters seen through the eyes into tongues, creating connections between the field of knowledge of complex objects and that of language. So far, these changes were considered to occur outside the brain, in the cortex, in an area of rapid adaptation to new situations. However, now researchers at Max Planck, together with those of the Indian Biomedical Research Center (CBMR) and the University of Hyderabad, have studied the changes that occur when learning to read in the brain of adults and have seen that the reorganization that this learning process causes in the brain reaches the bottom of the brain, the talamo and the brain trunk. The work has been published in the journal Science Advances.

The study was conducted with women aged 30 to 40 from India. Before they started, they were unable to know any words and two thirds were able to learn to read for six months. With the observed results, the researchers highlighted the plasticity of the adult brain. On the other hand, they have provided a new vision of dyslexia. In fact, it is considered that behind dyslexia there are dysfunctions of the talamo, but, in view that training in reading for a few months the talamo is restructured, they believe that this hypothesis must be reviewed.