Have you ever thought about how you’re physically able to process and understand words when reading a book in your head? What’s happening in your brain as you read this very sentence, phrase, word? Sabrina Turker, a neuroscientist from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, wonders the same thing. “Despite a great deal of neuroscientific research on the representation of language, little is known about the organization of language in the human brain,” she says. “Much of what we do know comes from single studies with small numbers of subjects and has not been confirmed in follow-up studies.”
Turker and her colleagues have tried to resolve this gap in their recently published study by using reading as a specific context of language. Their meta-analysis compiles data from 163 different experiments involving fMRI or PET brain scans from over 3,000 adults. The experiments targeted a variety of reading tasks and languages, ranging from individual alphabetic letters to full texts, read both silently and aloud.
Some experiments even used real versus nonsensical words, providing yet another avenue for understanding exactly what happens in our brains when confronted with something simultaneously familiar and strange. As the researchers explained, “What is typically considered ‘reading’ in the literature and by non-linguists, is usually semantic access [i.e. making meaning from written words], whereas what all included tasks here have in common is phonological processing [i.e. the brain’s ability to organize sounds and generate meaning from them].”
The results from this study confirmed the left brain’s strong associations with reading and linguistic processing, but also revealed the importance of a previously overlooked part of the brain in this context: the cerebellum. The cerebellum is typically associated with balance, movement, and motor learning. Turker and her colleagues found that the right cerebellum was especially active during the reading tasks, with certain parts of it more active when reading aloud.
The left cerebellum appeared to be most engaged when reading words, rather than when reading letters or longer strings of text, such as sentences or passages. The results are best summed up by the researchers themselves: “While the left cerebellum seems to show stronger semantic [meaning-making] involvement during reading, the right cerebellum contributed mainly to overall reading processes, potentially due to its role in speech production.”
This study also found differences in brain activity when reading silently, versus aloud. Silent reading used areas of the brain more associated with multiple cognitive demands, while out-loud reading tasks activated more auditory and motor areas.
While reading may seem like a singular kind of activity, the results of this study reveal quite the opposite: different kinds of reading in fact require numerous unique combinations of brain region activations to do so. As the authors of this comprehensive study assert, these findings “[extend] our understanding of the neural architecture underlying reading, [corroborate] findings from neurostimulation studies and can provide valuable neural insight into reading models.”
So, the next time you’re reading a book, remember that it’s not actually second nature and more like a complex process, not unlike a symphony—multiple regions playing their part in bringing a series of words and letters to life.
A new study published by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences reveals further insight into how our brain works when we read.
The study is a meta-analysis of over 160 different experiments, using data from over 3,000 adults.
Findings from this research indicate a wider variety of brain region activity than originally thought, including involvement from the cerebellum, which is typically associated with movement and motor learning.
The study also found a difference in brain region activity for silent versus out-loud reading, confirming that there is still much to be discovered about the brain when it comes to understanding human thinking and processing.
Sources: The ‘reading’ brain: Meta-analytic insight into functional activation during reading in adults
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