Chapter 5 - Building a Reading Brain Neurologically

Abstract

This chapter discusses building a reading brain neurologically. This chapter begins with an overview of the most important existing brain functions for literacy acquisition in sensory, motor, aural/oral language, cognition/ memory, and attention/executive control. The neural architect's plan for building a reading brain involves a remodel. This remodel is possible because the brain has the potential for flexible reorganization in which the same structures can participate in more than one functional system.. It discusses each function separately, but learning depends on these various systems working together in a co-operative manner in a functional system. The chapter continues with a synthesis of what has been learned about the functional reading system from in vivo brain imaging studies and computational models of brain processing. The reading brain is constructed during the remodel process in which other functional systems are recruited to create a new functional system.