Good at reading? Your brain may be organized differently

This article is Republished from Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

The number of people who read for pleasure seems to be steadily decreasing. Fifty percent of UK adults say they don’t read regularly (up from 42 percent in 2015), and nearly one in four 16- to 24-year-olds say they’ve never been readers, according to Research conducted 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 type of brain structure do good readers actually have? for me New studyPublished in the journal NeuroImage, he found out.

I analyzed open source data from over 1,000 participants to discover that readers of different abilities have distinct brain anatomy.

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

One was the front part of the temporal lobe. The left temporal pole helps relate and classify different types of meaningful information. To collect the meaning of the word like manThis brain area links visual, sensory, and motor information Convey how legs look, feel and move.

The other is Heschl’s gyrus, a fold in the superior temporal lobe that hosts the auditory cortex (the cortex is the outer layer of the brain). Better reading ability was associated with a greater frontal portion of the temporal lobe in the left hemisphere compared to the right hemisphere. It stands to reason that having a larger brain area dedicated to meaning makes it easier to understand words, and thus read.

What may seem less intuitive is that the auditory cortex is linked to reading. Isn’t reading primarily a visual skill? Not only. To pair letters with speech sounds, we first need to be familiar with the sounds of the language. this Phonological awareness He is a Solid introduction To develop reading in children.

Tender left Heschl’s gyrus has been previously associated with dyslexia, which… It involves severe difficulties in reading. My research shows that this difference in cortical thickness does not draw a simple dividing line between people with and without dyslexia. Instead, it includes a larger population, where thicker auditory cortex is associated with more skilled reading.

Why does size matter?

Is thicker always better? When it comes to cortical structure, no, not necessarily. We know that the auditory cortex contains a greater amount of myelin than the left hemisphere in most people. Myelin is a fatty substance that acts as insulation for nerve fibers. It increases the speed of nerve communication and can also isolate columns of brain cells from each other. Neural columns He thinks it works As small processing units.

It can be thought that their increased isolation and rapid communication in the left hemisphere enables the rapid and conclusive processing necessary for language. We need to know whether the speaker is using this category D or R When he says my dear or He cuts Instead of detecting the exact point at which the vocal folds begin to vibrate.