The human brain has not yet had time to develop an area specifically dedicated to reading: to recognize letters and words it reuses neurons that have evolved in ancient times to rework other types of visual stimuli.
This was discovered by researchers from the International School of Advanced Studies (Sissa) of Trieste, thanks to a study - published in Current Biology - which may also have important implications for artificial intelligence.
"The written language was invented about 5 thousand years ago, there was not enough time in evolutionary terms to develop an ad hoc system", explain the researchers Yamil Vidal and Davide Crepaldi.
"Nevertheless, in adults a part of the cortex seems to be specialized in reading: when we have a text in front of our eyes, a specific part of the brain, the left fusiform gyrus, is activated to perform the task. This same area is involved in visual recognition. of objects, and in particular of faces ".
On the other hand, "there are animals like baboons that can learn to recognize words visually, and this indicates that behind this process there is a reworking system that is not specific to language, but that has been recycled for reading. when humans became literate ".
To test this hypothesis, the researchers asked some volunteers to observe different symbols and images: some were similar to short words made up of triplets of letters, while others were 3D objects and still others were abstract images.
In all cases, the participants learned to recognize the new visual stimuli by recognizing basic characteristics (such as shape, size and structure) and even some statistical data (such as how often they occurred and how many times they appeared together).
It would therefore be this recognition system that would make us immerse ourselves in reading: an important discovery not only for the knowledge of our brain, but also for the training of artificial intelligence.
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