Lead author Jay Rueckl, director of UConn\u2019s Brain Imaging Research Center<\/a>, says \u2018reading is parasitic to speech\u2019\u00a0\u2013 meaning that the brain’s activity while reading involves speech and print mechanisms rather than a simple response evoked by print alone.<\/p>\n By comparing fMRI scans of 84 participants in four countries with highly contrasting languages \u2013 Spanish, English, Hebrew, and Chinese \u2013 the authors found that brain regions in the left hemisphere, including Broca\u2019s area (the region of the brain that influences the production of speech) and Wernicke\u2019s area (the region that influences the understanding of speech), were active both for the comprehension of printed words and for the comprehension of speech.<\/p>\n This strikingly similar neural organization was present despite dramatic differences in writing systems, including whether written words are alphabetical (such as English, Hebrew, or Spanish) or logo-graphic (such as Chinese), and regardless of the sound structure or the look of written characters.<\/p>\n Rueckl, an associate professor of psychological sciences, says the findings show that regardless of how spoken forms and their meanings are represented in a given writing system, proficient reading entails the convergence of speech and written systems onto a common network of brain structures.<\/p>\n This means that written languages have evolved to provide readers with maximal cues about spoken words and their meaning, and that the brain is capable of organizing both the spoken and written aspects of a language in a symbiotic system that facilitates a person\u2019s ability to read.<\/p>\n The findings\u00a0support a body of work that says a phonetical approach to reading \u2013 emphasizing the relation between written words and the sounds of the spoken words they represent \u2013 is crucial for successful instruction and intervention.<\/p>\n Rueckl notes that reading is not something that people have naturally evolved to do. \u201cTo learn to read, you have to take a brain that is set up to do some specific kinds of things and do something else with it. The neural system that allows us to learn to read is highly influenced by what else the brain is doing at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Intersect](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Brain-Rueckl-1-617x1024.jpg\")
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