Engaging Grammar and Visual Networks

ended

Literacy is a fundamental human right and the foundation for lifelong learning. Acquiring a new writing system has huge consequences for our everyday life but also for our brain. However, the neural underpinnings of this unique human skill are still unclear. Understanding how the brain learns to quickly map visual configurations to sounds and concepts represents a scientific challenge with educational and clinical implications. Visual and language brain circuits are strongly influenced by the experience of literacy1. With reading acquisition, these two brain circuits have to adjust and start to interact in completely new ways. The present project will investigate the structural and functional connections between visual and language systems by combining for the first time new cutting-edge techniques of cognitive neuroscience. Modern magnetoencephalographic (MEG) methods allow us to collect fine-grained time course description about cortical activations of visual and language areas, as well as about their spatial localizations and functional connectivity. Moreover, recent advances in quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI) methods enable us to collect structural measures of the white matter tissue connecting the reading network and measure properties that affect signal conduction, such as myelination. The present proposal will combine these two methodologies in order to describe how changes in myelination of the reading brain tracts are related to the functional interactions between language and visual areas. This new knowledge will allow us to 1) tease apart interactive and modular predictions on the reading network 2) uncover how this structural-functional relation between brain areas changes in reading acquisition and reading impairment.