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Are you a good reader? Your brain may be structured differently


THIS IS THE ARTICLE reprinted The conversation under it Creative Commons license.

The number of people who read for fun appears to be steadily declining, with 50 per cent of UK adults saying they don’t read regularly (up from 42 per cent in 2015) and almost one in four 16-24 year olds say they do. never been a reader Research by The Reading Agency.

But what are the implications?Will people’s preference for video over text affect our brains?What kind of brain do good readers really have? new studywhich was published in NeuroImage, revealed.

I analyzed open-source data from over 1,000 participants to find that readers with different abilities share distinct brain anatomy traits.

The structure of two regions of the left hemisphere, which are crucial for language, were different in people who were good at reading.

One was the anterior part of the temporal lobe. The left temporal pole helps to integrate and categorize different kinds of meaningful information. Collect the meaning of a word such as the legThis part of the brain integrates visual, sensory and motor information conveying how the legs look, feel and move.

Another was Heschl’s gyrus, a fold in the superior temporal lobe that hosts the auditory cortex (the outermost layer of the brain). having a larger area of ​​the brain devoted to meaning makes words easier to understand and therefore read.

What may seem less intuitive is that the auditory cortex is involved in reading. Isn’t reading primarily a visual skill? To associate letters with speech sounds, we must first be aware of the sounds of the language phonological awareness is well established premise for children’s reading development.

Heschl’s left gyrus has previously been associated with dyslexia, which implies severe reading difficulties. My research shows that this change in cortical thickness does not draw a clear dividing line between people with and without dyslexia. Instead, it spans a larger population where a thicker auditory cortex correlates with better reading.

Why does size matter?

Thicker is always better. When it comes to cortical structure, no. We know that the auditory cortex in most people has more myelin, which acts as an insulator for nerve fibers the speed of nerve communication and can also insulate brain cell columns from each other is supposed to work as small processing units.

One might think that their enhanced isolation and rapid communication in the left hemisphere enables the rapid, categorical processing necessary for language.We need to know if the speaker is using the category d: or t: while saying darling or tear gas rather than identifying the exact point where the vocal folds begin to vibrate.



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