How the brain learns to read is an evolutionary mystery—a new study offers clues

How the brain learns to read is an evolutionary mystery—a new study offers clues

Reading hasn't been around for long, evolutionary speaking. Instead, the brain recruits systems evolved for other purposes

For an experienced reader, recognising the words on this page feels effortless. Yet, evolutionarily speaking, your brain shouldn’t be able to read. Reading has existed for too short a time to have shaped a dedicated centre in the brain.

Therefore, the brain has to learn to read using systems that evolved for other purposes . But it has long been unclear exactly which systems it recruits to do so and how.

This is important, as differences in these pre-existing systems could shed light on why some of us find reading easier than others. It could also explain how people who are deaf, blind or have dyslexia learn to read in remarkably different ways. In my new paper , published in Cerebral Cortex , I have come up with some answers.

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In my study, I investigated the relationship between individuals’ reading skills and their fine-grained brain structure. I also compared twins with different degrees of genetic overlap to see whether shared genetic factors contribute to the links between brain structure and reading skill.

These patterns offer clues about which parts of the distributed “reading network” might provide the initial conditions for reading, and which might respond more to experience.