Reading Chinese characters involves the same brain regions as used when reading French.
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Learning to read Chinese might seem daunting to Westerners used to an alphabetic script, but brain scans of French and Chinese native speakers show that people harness the same brain centers for reading across cultures. The findings are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Reading involves two neural systems: one that recognizes the shape of the word and a second that assesses the physical movements used to make the marks on a page, says study leader Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
But it has been unclear whether the brain networks responsible for reading are universal or culturally distinct. Previous studies have suggested that alphabetic writing systems (such as French) and logographic ones (such as Chinese, in which single characters represent entire words) writing systems might engage different networks in the brain.
To explore this question, Dehaene and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain activity in Chinese and French people while they read their native languages.
The researchers found that both Chinese and French people use the visual and gestural systems while reading their native language, but with different emphases that reflect the different demands of each language.
“Rather than focusing on ear and eye in reading, the authors rightly point out that hand and eye are critical players,” says Uta Frith, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London. “This could lead into novel directions — for instance, it might provide answers why many people with dyslexia also have very poor handwriting and not just poor spelling.”
Understanding how the brain decodes symbols during reading — using both visual and motor centers — might also inform learning strategies for general literacy, and ways to attune them to children or adults.
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There is evidence that for all languages, reading activates a shape-recognition region in the brain’s posterior left hemisphere — the visual word-forming area (VWFA). But some research has indicated that readers of Chinese — which places great emphasis on the order and direction of writing strokes — also use other brain networks involved in the motor skills that are engaged for writing.
Motor processing is universally used for writing and involves a brain region known as Exner’s area. The researchers postulated that this region is also activated in reading to interpret the gestures assumed to have gone into making the marks.
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7 Comments
Add CommentThis research appears to skip over the different 'bottlenecks' to code processing that the writing systems impose - particularly as it relates to 'learning to read' rather than comparing already competent readers. The 'bottleneck' I refer to is the time it takes the brain to process through the 'code-ambiguity' - the single biggest processing bog (for most) when learning to read 'deeper' alphabetic scripts (such as French and English). For more: http://goo.gl/C2aGV and http://goo.gl/ODFbT
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis study curiously seems to identify from fMRI studies of reading only the correlate between visual symbol identification and motor reproduction. Yet the most crucial element of reading seems to have been overlooked. Surely much of the brain activity produced by reading a known language must be involved with extracting abstract meaning from the encoded symbols! There's so much more involved with reading comprehension than simple symbol recognition! How could the researchers have possibly overlooked this activity?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeing both a native english speaker and being taught Japanese, i really have not found any real difference with reading and writing with ease of reading, comprehension and ease of writing. Granted Japanese uses both Chinese characters and an alphabet, I actualy find it easier to read kanji, than kanji written phonetically in hiragana.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering how easy it was to learn to use Kanji in writing, the brain is most likely processing all writing the same way. After all, "Writing this sentence" in english involved 20 letters, printed with 35 strokes of the pen. この文を書いている in japanese using two kanji was actually about 30 strokes of the pen. Basically the same and to me both are equally the same in effort, comprehension speed and visual recognition.
It would have been interesting if they included in this study people who do in fact read and write in multiple languages to see what their brains are doing.
It is worth pointing out that the main features of this result of Dehaene's is already well known. See Crinion J, et al. Language control in the bilingual brain. Science (2006) Jun 9;312(5779):1537-40.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is deplorable when eminent scientists fail to perform proper literature searches.
It makes evolutionary sense to 'view' (virtually that is), and then 're-view' (symbol-wise) with our deepest-seated sensory apps in our brain, which MUST date back to our rather speechless past, shared with other primates!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe niceties of writing systems in different languages are only like a late cultural 'varnish' on a very old
system, rooted in our limbic pre-language touchy/feely/movie department. "I think therefore I am!" seems like an afterthought, when we are 'coming to our to our senses'. The metaphysical poets were said to have had 'their intellect at the tips of their senses', as somebody put it.Talking of 'put', isn't it remarkable how our language is a web of metaphorical imagery?
I had to learn Greek letters fast in order to study ancient Greek, and to my surprise it soon became a rather empirical/instinctive skill.
We can compare the Roman number system with the Arab one: Three strokes: 'III' makes '3'- we can even call it 'alphabetical/numerical' versus 'symbolical'.
But no doubt a Roman brain must have processed the meaning of 'three', or rather, 'tres', in the same region as an Indian/Arab, or us, for that matter!
We still tend to use our fingers when counting; it involves primeval digital motion.
As a former language teacher, I have found that gesticulating helps enormously when we are searching for a better expression! No wonder the ancient art of rhetoric relied on the right movement of the speaker' s hands! The 'hands-on' approach covers all our most human achievements - from writing to playing music, or tennis,
or anything - manipulation ( meaning:literally, hand movement) included!
The content would probably light up different parts of the brain, depending on the content. What the researchers were probably looking for is areas that light up consistently. The purpose being to understand what areas are involved in the "process" of reading. The content is separate from the process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow! It actually took a formal study to point out that reading and interpreting language of two differing styles uses the same part of the brain. Reading is the same activity no matter what the subject matter.
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