Neural pathways for reading

Unlike speech which is naturally acquired, reading is an ability that is acquired only through instruction. It is a complex cognitive skill which involves decoding letters and converting them to sounds, so as to obtain meaning. Since reading is a cultural invention only about 5000 years old, the human brain does not have a central region dedicated for it. It gradually evolved to accomplish this skill through co-operation between regions originally intended to perform other functions like the vision, audition and movement.

 

Most of the research on reading processes in the brain has been performed on monolingual individuals who speak only one language. However, about one third of the world’s children grow up in bi/multilingual environments. This is especially true for India where Bi/multiliteracy has been the norm, i.e., Children learn to read two or more languages simultaneously before 5 years of age. While very less research has been performed to study how reading processes develop in childhood, even little is known about reading development in bilingual children. Work in our laboratory has focused on studying brain basis of reading in children and adults who learn to read two languages- Hindi and English, using a combination of behavior and structural and functional brain imaging.

 

Our recent findings using functional MRI revealed that in children learning to read both these languages by 5 years, the brain employs a shared set of regions for reading both languages. We also find that, by 8-10 years of age, few brain regions start responding differently for English and Hindi reading. This activity equips them to deal with specific features of each language. Current work includes investigating structural basis of reading and literacy skills in Hindi-English biliterate children and exploring how connectivity between brain regions evolve with reading experience. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Publications

1. The influence of orthographic depth on reading networks in simultaneous biliterate children, S. Cherodath , N.C. Singh, Brain and Language, doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2015.02.001 (2015).

2. The developing biliterate brain, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, ISSBD Bulletin 1(61), 22 - 26 (2012).

3. Dyslexia, orthography, and brain, P. Padakannaya, N.B. Ramachandra and N.C. Singh, Current Science, 1381 (2008).