How the Brain Learns to Read Can Depend on the Language

SCIENCE JOURNAL
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ
How the Brain Learns to Read Can Depend on the Language
May 2, 2008; Page A10

For generations, scholars have debated whether language constrains theways we think. Now, neuroscientists studying reading disorders havebegun to wonder whether the actual character of the text itself mayshape the brain.Studies of schoolchildren who read in varying alphabets and characterssuggest that those who are dyslexic in one language, say Chinese orEnglish, may not be in another, such as Italian.Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences The images, made using functional magnetic resonance imaging, show brainregions with significant activation during a rhyming task. (a and b) Thecortical activation associated with rhyme judgment contrasted in normaland dyslexic Chinese readers. (c) Brain regions showing groupdifferences during rhyme judgment.Dyslexia, in which the mind scrambles letters or stumbles over text, istwice as prevalent in the U.S., where it affects about 10 millionchildren, as in Italy, where the written word more closely correspondsto its spoken sound. "Dyslexia exists only because we invented reading,"said Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, author of"Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain."Among children raised to read and write Chinese, the demands of readingdraw on parts of the brain untouched by the English alphabet, newneuroimaging studies reveal. It's the same with dyslexia, psychologistLi Hai Tan at Hong Kong Research University and his colleagues reportedlast month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Theproblems occur in areas not involved in reading other alphabets.Using two brain-imaging techniques, they identified striking differencesin neural anatomy and brain activity between children able to read andwrite Chinese easily and classmates struggling to keep pace. Both wereat odds with patterns of brain activity among readers of the Englishalphabet.Even when readers in both languages looked at the same writtencharacters, the brain activity was different, other researchers found.Arabic numerals of standard arithmetic -- used by readers of Chinese andEnglish alike -- activate different brain regions depending on which ofthe two languages people had first learned to read, researchers at theChinese Academy of Sciences and China's Dalian University of Technologyreported in 2006.JOIN THE DISCUSSION<http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366> <http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366> <http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366> How much reading do you do in a day? Do you find yourself stumbling overwords from time to time? Share your view<http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366> with Robert Lee Hotz andother readers in an online forum<http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366> ."In this sense, we may regard dyslexia in Chinese and English as twodifferent brain disorders," Dr. Tan said, "because completely differentbrain regions are disrupted. It's very likely that a person who isdyslexic in Chinese would not be dyslexic in English."By any measure, reading is a complex and peculiar task. At the speed ofthought, readers of English turn letters they see into sounds, soundsinto words, and words into meaning. Fluency is measured in milliseconds.Spelling variations are speed bumps in the brain.Until recently, researchers who study reading abilities focused mostlyon Western alphabets. English and 218 other languages, from Alsatian toZulu, share variations of the same Latin character set. But that set isonly one of 60 writing systems used among the world's remaining 6,912spoken languages. Even so, those studies convinced many scientists andeducators that the brain's response to the written word, regardless ofthe language, is universal.The new research suggests they're wrong. The schooling required to readEnglish or Chinese may fine-tune neural circuits in distinctive ways.To learn the ABCs of English, we essentially harness our listeningskills to a phonetic code. To become literate in Chinese, however, wemust make much heavier use of memory, motor control andvisual-perception circuits located toward the front of the brain.Children can master the 6,000 or so Chinese characters used in Mandarinand Cantonese text only by laboriously copying them out over and overagain, until each abstract form becomes second nature."We have to recognize that the writing system in China is different, thedemands on the brain are different and the characteristics of dyslexiaare different," said Georgetown University pediatric learning specialistGuinevere Eden, who is incoming president of the International DyslexiaAssociation.RECOMMENDED READINGWords do make a lasting impression, depending on the alphabet in whichwe read and write them.Indeed, in Chinese text, reading engages different parts of the brainthan English text. At the University of Hong Kong, linguist Li-Hai Tan<http://www.hku.hk/fmri/people_tan.htm> and his colleagues reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/105/14/5561> that the readingproblems of dyslexia also affect the brain differently depending uponthe writing system.In Nature Neuroscience<http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v6/n7/abs/nn1065.html> , GeorgetownUniversity dyslexia expert Guinevere Eden<http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/edeng/?PageTemplateID=131> andher colleagues tracked how literacy reorganizes the brain by studyingneural changes in people between the ages of 6 and 22 years old as theylearned to read and write English.As the mother of a son with reading difficulties, Tufts University childdevelopment expert Maryanne Wolf<http://ase.tufts.edu/crlr/staff/maryanne.html> explores theneurobiology of reading in Proust and the Squid: The Story and Scienceof the Reading Brain<http://www.amazon.com/Proust-Squid-Story-Science-Reading/dp/0060186399>.Harvard experimental psychologist Steven Pinker<http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/> explains how the mind works byexamining how we use words in The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Windowinto Human Nature<http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-Thought-Language-Window-Nature/dp/0670063274/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209566880&sr=8-1> . The U.S. National Research Council consulted psychologists,neurobiologists, and educators about the literacy problems plaguing asmany as four in ten American children for its report "Preventing ReadingDifficulties in Young Children."(http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=6023)To document the effects on brain development, Dr. Eden and hercolleagues are launching a five-year study in Beijing and Washington tocompare the neural changes in 60 schoolchildren learning to read eitherChinese or English. "Nobody has ever done this across two writingsystems," Dr. Eden said.In ways that ancient scribes never imagined, text has transformed us.Every brain shaped by reading, whether it is schooled in Chinese orEnglish text, measurably differs -- in terms of patterns of energy useand brain structure -- from one that has never mastered the writtenword, comparative brain-imaging studies show. "There are realdifferences that emerge because of literacy," Dr. Wolf said.Some social psychologists speculate that the brain changes caused byliteracy could be involved in cultural differences in memory, attentionand visual perception. In January's Psychological Science, MITresearchers reported that European-Americans and students from severalEast Asian cultures, for example, showed different patterns of brainactivation when making snap judgments about visual patterns.No one knows which came first: habits of thought or the writing systemthat gave them tangible form. A writing system could be drawn from thearchaeology of the mind, perpetuating aspects of mental life conceivedat the dawn of civilization."Once you have different writing systems in place," said University ofMichigan social psychologist Richard Nisbett. "They may reinforce theperceptual and cognitive trends that preceded the invention of writing.They may go hand in glove."* Email me at sciencejournal@wsj.com. For a discussion on today'scolumn, go to the Science Journal forum<http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366> .( http://forums.wsj.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366 )