Researchers identify brain regions that encode words, grammar, story

Scientists have produced the first integrated computational model of reading, identifying which parts of the brain are responsible for such sub-processes as parsing sentences, determining the meaning of words and understanding relationships between characters.

They based their results on brain scan of people reading a Harry Potter book.

The authors of this study, Leila Wehbe, Ph.D. student in the Machine Learning Department of the Carnegie Mellon University and Tom Mitchell, the department head, said the model is still inexact, but might someday be useful in studying and diagnosing reading disorders, such as dyslexia, or to track the recovery of patients whose speech was impacted by a stroke.

It also might be used by educators to identify what might be giving a student trouble when learning a foreign language.

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