Neuroscientists have discovered which part of our brains says true words besides Srhlil

Our brains are extraordinary pieces of biological machinery. Among the many difficult jobs they handle with apparent ease is that of distinguishing true words from random letter strings, all with great speed and precision. Now, scientists think they have found the part of the brain responsible for this task.

New research points to the mid-fusiform cortex, a section of the temporal lobe (known for processing incoming sensory information), as the place in the brain where our visual dictionary is stored and accessed. It is this dictionary that helps us understand if a word is actually understandable.

The team behind the discovery thinks these findings could suggest why some people can read much faster than others, as well as offer clues for managing reading disorders such as dyslexia.

“How much the fusiform middle responds to a word and how quickly it can distinguish between a real word and a fictional one depends largely on how often the real word is encountered in everyday speech,” says University of Texas neurosurgeon Nitin Tandon.

“Words as short and common as ‘say’ can be identified quickly, but long, infrequent words such as ‘murmurs’ take longer to identify as real words.

The team used brain scans from 35 participants who were being treated for epilepsy and therefore already had electrodes adapted to the brain. Brain activity was monitored as the volunteers had to perceive real words, nonsense words, and even words in a made-up font that resembles something you would see in a dark science fiction movie.

Sample stimuli used in the study. (Woolnough et al., Nature human behavior, 2020)

According to the observed neural processing models, the fusiform middle reacts first, jumping to compare what we are seeing with a database of known words. Once a word is recognized, the information is sent elsewhere in the brain for further processing.

To test their hypothesis on the mid-fusiform section of the brain, the scientists applied short electrical stimuli to stop it from functioning, which temporarily prevented the study subjects from being able to read correctly.

“We have shown that if we temporarily interrupt activity in the mid-fusiform cortex using briefly applied electrical impulses, it causes a temporary inability to read, dyslexia, but does not interrupt other language functions such as naming visual objects or understanding speech. spoken, “says Tandon.

The mention of dyslexia is important – it is one of the most common language-based learning disorders we know, and research could help us understand it better and find ways to manage it, as well as other reading disorders.

It is a fascinating area of ​​science that we are constantly learning about. We know, for example, that our brains can understand and break down known words even if some of the middle letters are in the wrong order.

As would be expected, the fusiform middle has spent the longest processing unfamiliar words. Commonly used words in English were quickly identified and passed on, where other sections of the brain can process the structure and meaning of the sentence – and this will likely affect our level of reading comprehension.

“Because word frequency is a major factor determining how fast people can read, the fusiform medium is likely to act as a bottleneck for speed of reading,” says Tandon.

The research was published in Nature human behavior.