Good at reading? Your brain may be structured differently

THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons License.

The number of people who read for fun seems to be steadily declining. Fifty per cent of UK adults say they do not read regularly (up from 42 per cent in 2015) and almost one in four 16-24 year olds say they have never been a reader, according to research by The Reading Agency.

But what are the implications? Will people’s preference for video over text affect our brains or our evolution as a species? What kind of brain structure do good readers really have? My new studypublished in NeuroImage, he discovered.

I analyzed open source data from more than 1,000 participants to discover that readers of different abilities had distinct characteristics in the anatomy of the brain.

The structure of two regions in 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 associate and categorize different types of meaningful information. To assemble the meaning of a word like legthis region of the brain combines visual, sensory and motor information it conveys how the legs look, feel and move.

The other was Heschl’s gyrus, a fold on the superior temporal lobe that houses the auditory cortex (the cortex is the outermost layer of the brain). Better reading ability was linked to a larger anterior part of the temporal lobe in the left hemisphere compared to the right. It makes sense that having a larger area of ​​the brain dedicated to meaning makes it easier to understand words and, therefore, to read.

What may be less intuitive is that the auditory cortex would be related to reading. Isn’t reading primarily a visual skill? Not alone. To match letters with speech sounds, we first need to be aware of the sounds of the language. This phonological awareness is a well established precursor to children’s reading development.

A thinner Heschl’s gyrus was first linked to dyslexia, which involves serious reading difficulties. My research shows that this variation in cortical thickness does not draw a simple dividing line between people with and without dyslexia. Instead, it covers the larger population, in which a larger auditory cortex correlates with more adept reading.

Why Size Matters

Is bigger always better? When it comes to cortical structure, no, not necessarily. We know that the auditory cortex has more myelin in the left hemisphere than most people. Myelin is a fatty substance that acts as an insulator for nerve fibers. It increases the speed of neural communication and can also insulate columns of brain cells from each other. Neural column it is believed to work as small processing units.

Their increased isolation and rapid communication in the left hemisphere may be thought to enable the fast and categorical processing required for language. We need to know if a speaker uses the category d o t when it is said darling o tears rather than detecting the exact point where the vocal cords begin vibration.