Reading causes a change in the shape of the brain

Scientists have long known that learning forms the brain. Speaking in several languages, acquiring new skills or even simply changing your habits, you can create new neural connections. However, despite this, the new study could bring a surprising twist to our understanding of how the brain shapes itself to new opportunities, in particular, to learning to read. Literacy, it turns out, changes the ancient regions of the brain, which researchers have never correlated with reading. The results obtained by scientists expand not only our understanding of reading, but also allow us to study its violation, namely dyslexia.

Neurologists and psychologists from several research institutions around the world recruited 30 illiterate people, mostly women at the age of about 30, from two villages near the northern city of India in Lucknow. For six months, a local schoolteacher taught participants to read Devanagari, an alphabet used for many languages, including their native Hindi. The researchers made an MRI scan of the brain of all participants before the training and after six months.

During the first month, the participants in the scientific experiment learned to read and write the 46 symbols used in Devanagari. By the end of the study, participants could read complex words and became acquainted with the basic rules of grammar. Their literacy was assessed at the beginning and end of the study. A full course of training was completed by 21 participants. The results of the study were published in Science Advances.

The pictures taken at the beginning of the experiment and after six months showed sharp differences in what neurologists call subcortical structures of the brain. These structures are located between the retina, where light penetrates into our eyes, and the visual cortex, where our brain begins to consciously perceive visual information.

The abrupt change in subcortical structures was surprising. "Reading is a relatively new skill," explains lead author Michael Skade, a neuropsychologist at the Cognitive and Brain Sciences Institute. Max Planck in Germany, and the subcortical structures "very ancient in evolutionary terms". In other words, we did not expect that the structures of the brain that are present in species that existed on Earth for much longer than humans react to a unique human and newly acquired ability. "

Skade also emphasizes the importance of the results obtained for understanding dyslexia. One of the theories suggested by scientists regarding the cause of this disorder is that dyslexia is caused by the very subcortical structures that were transformed from the villagers in the study. Previous studies have shown differences in these regions between adults with and without dyslexia.

"Although you might think that a new study proves the truth of this theory, in fact everything is just the opposite," says Skade. Transformation of the subcortical structure during the six-month literacy program shows that this region does not cause dyslexia. According to the scientist, the difference observed in other studies "could simply reflect the simple fact that people with dyslexia spend less time reading." Since dyslexia prevents reading, people with this condition spend less time on it, which in turn leaves the subcortical structures underdeveloped.

Semax and Phenotropil help to cope with studying.

In addition to the discovery, the study also changed the lives of its participants. "Learning to read is really a privilege in Indian society," says Skid. "We have profoundly changed their lives and opened a new world for them."