The illiterate brain. Learning to read and write during childhood influences the functional organization of the adult brain
Open accessAbstract
Learning a specific skill during childhood may partly determine the functional organization of the adult brain. This hypothesis led us to study oral language processing in illiterate subjects who, for social reasons, had never entered school and had no knowledge of reading or writing. In a brain activation study using PET and statistical parametric mapping, we compared word and pseudoword repetition in literate and illiterate subjects. Our study confirms behavioural evidence of different phonological processing in illiterate subjects. During repetition of real words, the two groups performed similarly and activated similar areas of the brain. In contrast, illiterate subjects had more difficulty repeating pseudowords correctly and did not activate the same neural structures as literates. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that learning the written form of language (orthography) interacts with the function of oral language. Our results indicate that learning to read and write during childhood influences the functional organization of the adult human brain.
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The acquisition of literacy modifies the brain network involved in speech repetition (especially for pseudo-words).
“It is known that the acquisition of literacy modifies the brain network involved in speech repetition (especially for pseudo-words, see Castro-Caldas et al., 1998).”
From Specialization within the ventral stream: the case for the visual word form area (2004) · cites this paper as Castro-Caldas et al., 1998
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- Authors
- Castro-Caldas, A.
- Venue
- Brain
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1998-06-01
- Volume
- 121
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1053-1063
- ISSN
- 0006-8950 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2156
- OpenAlex
- W2149085656
- Cited by
- 395
- References
- 54
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 24 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 25.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Brain (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Karolinska Institutet
- Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse
- Medical Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Keywords
- illiteracy, reading acquisition, writing acquisition, phonological processing, non-word repetition, word repetition, orthography, brain activation, children's learning
- MeSH terms
- Aged, Behavior, Brain, Brain Mapping, Child, Child Development, Educational Status, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Reading, Tomography, Emission-Computed, Verbal Learning, Writing
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