![]() ![]() ![]() Evolution thus did not have the time to develop specialized reading circuits in Homo Sapiens.” (p 4) These time spans are a mere trifle in evolutionary terms. “writing was born only fifty-four hundred years ago in the Fertile Crescent, and the alphabet itself is only thirty-eight hundred years old. According to this approach, our neuronal networks are literally “recycled” for reading.” (p 2) It postulates that the brain circuitry inherited from our primate evolution can be co-opted to the task of recognizing printed words. If our brain had been different, we would either not be able to read or our writing systems would be very different.This makes it possible for human beings to quickly process the meaning of letters and transform them into ideas.Those shapes roughly correspond to the shape of letters in the alphabet.The human brain minimizes the “file size” of visual memories by remembering shapes, not pixels.Our writing systems evolved by repurposing the neural networks of the brain that evolved among primates.Topic of Bookĭehaene overviews the science of how the human brain processes the written word. If you enjoy this summary, please support the author by buying the book. Title: Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read ![]()
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