Human evolution: newborn pre-wired to see words II (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, October 23, 2020, 21:00 (1490 days ago) @ David Turell

David: A new finding using newborn MRI compared to adult:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-humans-born-brains-prewired-words.html

"Humans are born with a part of the brain that is prewired to be receptive to seeing words and letters, setting the stage at birth for people to learn how to read, a new study suggests.

"Analyzing brain scans of newborns, researchers found that this part of the brain—called the 'visual word form area' (VWFA) - is connected to the language network of the brain.

"'That makes it fertile ground to develop a sensitivity to visual words—even before any exposure to language," said Zeynep Saygin,

"The VWFA is specialized for reading only in literate individuals. Some researchers had hypothesized that the pre-reading VWFA starts out being no different than other parts of the visual cortex that are sensitive to seeing faces, scenes or other objects, and only becomes selective to words and letters as children learn to read or at least as they learn language.

"'We found that isn't true. Even at birth, the VWFA is more connected functionally to the language network of the brain than it is to other areas," Saygin said. "It is an incredibly exciting finding."

***

"'The VWFA is specialized to see words even before we're exposed to them," Saygin said.

"'It's interesting to think about how and why our brains develop functional modules that are sensitive to specific things like faces, objects, and words," said Li, who is lead author of the study.

"'Our study really emphasized the role of already having brain connections at birth to help develop functional specialization, even for an experience-dependent category like reading.'"

David: Comment: WE have no way of knowing just how this special set of connections developed or when. Knowing spoken language developed first and reading later, then two possibilities are it already existed when sapiens arrived, or it developed from preexisting modules in the brain by plasticity.

An afterthought: it sure looks like God pre-planning for expected human activities involving language, reading and writing.