Brain Processes New Words As Pictures

New findings published in the Journal of Neuroscience show us that when our brain sees a picture, not a group of letters needing to be processed, the brain quickly learns the words by tuning neurons to respond to a complete word, not just parts of it.

"We are not recognizing words by quickly spelling them out or identifying parts of words, as some researchers have suggested. Instead, neurons in a small brain area remember how the whole word looks -- using what could be called a visual dictionary," said senior study author Maximilian Riesenhuber, PhD, who leads the GUMC Laboratory for Computational Cognitive Neuroscience, in a news release.

A very small area of the brain is responsible for this, known as the visual word form area that can be found in the left side of the visual cortex, opposite from the fusiform face area on the right side.

"One area is selective for a whole face, allowing us to quickly recognize people, and the other is selective for a whole word, which helps us read quickly," Riesenhuber added.

For the study, 25 adult participants were asked to learn a set of 150 nonsense words. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain plasticity and investigate how visual words were formed in the area, even when participants learned nonsense words.

The study asked 25 adult participants to learn a set of 150 nonsense words. The brain plasticity associated with learning was then investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), both before and after training.

Findings revealed that before training, the neurons responded to the learned words like the real ones. However, it also showed that it did not reveal how the brain processes words, but only gave glimpses into insights to help those with reading disabilities and potentially other learning issues.

"For people who cannot learn words by phonetically spelling them out -- which is the usual method for teaching reading -- learning the whole word as a visual object may be a good strategy."