Learning to read as adult changes brain'
Rosamma Thomas
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Jaipur
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Contrary To Popular Belief, New Research Finds You Can Start To Pick Up A Skill At Any Age
The adult brain, contrary to popular belief, is quite flexible, says a new study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. The research was conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Bio-Medical Research, Lucknow, and the University of Hyderabad.The researchers studied changes in the brain of 30 illiterate women from villages near Lucknow, aged between 18 and 30 years, after they received daily lessons in Hindi for six months. There were two control groups -30 illiterate women given no training, and a group comprising literate women who had received no formal education.
All three groups were made to undergo a restingstate functional MRI, used to analyse the functional connectivity in the human brain, at the outset. The first group underwent the scan once again after the training.
A comparison of the results showed changes in the brain -in the thalamus and brainstem -after the women learned to read and write.
“At the beginning of the training, the majority of them could not decipher a single written word of their mother tongue Hindi,“ website `ScienceDaily .com' said in a report on the study , adding that participants reached a level comparable to that of first-graders after only six months of reading training. “This growth of knowledge is remarkable,“ project leader Falk Huettig, of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, was quoted as saying.
The findings, which hold enormous potential for assessment of conditions like dyslexia, were published in the journal `Science Advances' on May 24.
“Reading is such a new ability in human evolutionary history that the existence of a `reading area' could not be specified in our genes.A kind of recycling process has to take place in the brain while learning to read: Areas evolved for the recognition of complex objects, such as faces, become engaged in translating let ters into language. Some regions of our visual system thereby turn into interfaces between the visual and language systems,“ `ScienceDaily' explained in its report on the study.
Huettig was quoted as saying that the study flew in the face of the belief so far that changes in the brain were limited to the outer layer, the cortex, which adapts quickly to new challenges.
“In contrast to previous assumptions, the learning process leads to a reorganisation that extends to deep brain structures in the thalamus and the brainstem. The relatively young phenomenon of human writing therefore changes brain regions that are very old in evolutionary terms and already core parts of mice and other mammalian brains,“ the website reported.
Michael Skeide, scientific researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and first author of the study , was quoted as explaining that the research explained why experienced readers navigated text more efficiently .
“We observed that the socalled colliculi superiores, a part of the brainstem, and the pulvinar, located in the thalamus, adapt the timing of their activity patterns to those of the visual cortex,“ Skeide was quoted as saying by `ScienceDaily'.
He explained that these deep structures in the thalamus and brainstem helped our visual cortex, which processes visual stimuli, fil ter important information from the flood of visual inputs even before we consciously perceive it. Interestingly , the more the signal timings between the two brain regions are aligned, the better the reading capabilities.
“We, therefore, believe that these brain systems increasingly fine-tune their communication as learners become more and more proficient in reading,“ the neuroscientist said.
Asked why the study was conducted on an all-women group, Uttam Kumar, assistant professor at the Centre for Bio-Medical Research's MRI neuro-imaging unit, said, “That was done to eliminate any controversy around differences in the learning pattern of men and women and to ensure uniformity in results.“
He said what the study showed was that “it does not matter what age you start to pick up a skill as long as it is a psychologically normal brain. If done in a sequential manner, the brain can accommodate the learning and the change is apparent.“
Source: Times of India, 15-06-2017
All three groups were made to undergo a restingstate functional MRI, used to analyse the functional connectivity in the human brain, at the outset. The first group underwent the scan once again after the training.
A comparison of the results showed changes in the brain -in the thalamus and brainstem -after the women learned to read and write.
“At the beginning of the training, the majority of them could not decipher a single written word of their mother tongue Hindi,“ website `ScienceDaily .com' said in a report on the study , adding that participants reached a level comparable to that of first-graders after only six months of reading training. “This growth of knowledge is remarkable,“ project leader Falk Huettig, of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, was quoted as saying.
The findings, which hold enormous potential for assessment of conditions like dyslexia, were published in the journal `Science Advances' on May 24.
“Reading is such a new ability in human evolutionary history that the existence of a `reading area' could not be specified in our genes.A kind of recycling process has to take place in the brain while learning to read: Areas evolved for the recognition of complex objects, such as faces, become engaged in translating let ters into language. Some regions of our visual system thereby turn into interfaces between the visual and language systems,“ `ScienceDaily' explained in its report on the study.
Huettig was quoted as saying that the study flew in the face of the belief so far that changes in the brain were limited to the outer layer, the cortex, which adapts quickly to new challenges.
“In contrast to previous assumptions, the learning process leads to a reorganisation that extends to deep brain structures in the thalamus and the brainstem. The relatively young phenomenon of human writing therefore changes brain regions that are very old in evolutionary terms and already core parts of mice and other mammalian brains,“ the website reported.
Michael Skeide, scientific researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and first author of the study , was quoted as explaining that the research explained why experienced readers navigated text more efficiently .
“We observed that the socalled colliculi superiores, a part of the brainstem, and the pulvinar, located in the thalamus, adapt the timing of their activity patterns to those of the visual cortex,“ Skeide was quoted as saying by `ScienceDaily'.
He explained that these deep structures in the thalamus and brainstem helped our visual cortex, which processes visual stimuli, fil ter important information from the flood of visual inputs even before we consciously perceive it. Interestingly , the more the signal timings between the two brain regions are aligned, the better the reading capabilities.
“We, therefore, believe that these brain systems increasingly fine-tune their communication as learners become more and more proficient in reading,“ the neuroscientist said.
Asked why the study was conducted on an all-women group, Uttam Kumar, assistant professor at the Centre for Bio-Medical Research's MRI neuro-imaging unit, said, “That was done to eliminate any controversy around differences in the learning pattern of men and women and to ensure uniformity in results.“
He said what the study showed was that “it does not matter what age you start to pick up a skill as long as it is a psychologically normal brain. If done in a sequential manner, the brain can accommodate the learning and the change is apparent.“
Source: Times of India, 15-06-2017
