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Les Neurones De La Lecture (2000)

by Stanislas Dehaene(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

2738119743 (ISBN13: 9782738119742)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Odile Jacob

review 1: Reading requires rapid and successive interpretations of small sets of visual marks (in alphabetic writing, no more than 5-7 letters per saccade) by neurons from several regions of the brain, interrogating the symbols until the most likely hypothesis of their meaning is established. The very first operation in each saccade is to recognize the symbols as letters (rather than corporate logos, or numbers, or something else) and attribute possible sounds to them. If the symbols invariably represent a single sound (as in Italian or German), it is quickly recognized by the phonics neurons. If they may represent several possible sounds (e.g., the letters "ough" in English), other neurons from other parts of the brain must apply grammatical rules while others evaluate context (th... moree symbols seen in previous saccades) to narrow the possible interpetations. Recognition of symbols as letters (or phonemes or characters in nonalphabetic systems) occurs in all humans, regardless of culture or writing system, in approximately the same section of the left brain hemisphere, but requires activation of other brain sections to interpret them. Recognition of simplified symbols, or "proto letters", evolved millions of years before the invention of writing, inspired by common forms seen in nature: L, Y, T etc. "…over time, scribes developed increasingly efficient notations that fitted the organization of our brains. In brief, our cortex did not specifically evolve for writing. Rather, writing evolved to fit the cortex." Thus all writing systems in all cultures, even Chinese or the many Indian scripts, share common features: combinations of symbols of no more than 4 strokes, arranged in straight, regular lines. All (even Chinese) include some signal of sound. Those writing systems that correspond most closely to spoken sounds (e.g., Finnish, Italian, German) are the quickest for children to learn, English is the most difficult of the European languages and reading Chinese takes much longer. Phonics teaching is far superior to "whole word" approach for enabling the learner to read unfamiliar words.
review 2: "Reading in the Brain" by Stanislas Dehaene is a good book that explains the seemingly simple thing how people read or rather how some tracks on paper (or screen) become something that inspires us, make us sad or indifferent.The book will appeal most to those readers who are already familiar with the brain terminology, neurology or science research on that field due to many terms that are not always easy to understand for someone completely uninformed of topic.The author brought detailed analysis of things that are happening in human brain when we're reading that starts with an explanation how is even possible that we read.He is telling about human evolution when humans learned to make marks on shapes in nature to be able to survive.Further development created the need to develop some characters that were based on those same symbols and their forms from nature.The next step was the development of letters based on symbols and therefore isn't suprise for reader to learn that reading uses the same part of our brain that is used during the recognition of symbols.To the reader author will present results of numerous experiments and tests performed on healthy people but also on people who had strokes or some other brain problems, in order to find out how the process of reading works.He speaks about functions of our eyes, letters recognition and turning them with the help of our brain into sound, in the end combining those sounds in recognizable words.The author is giving advices about best methods to teach reading and quick reading.Also, Dehaene calls for extra effort to conduct extensive experiments to help people with dyslexia, in order to eradicate this problem once and for all, and provide access for all people in the world to unlimited knowledge that lies in written documents.There is also a lot more inside making it an informative read though, as already mentioned, the book's target audience would be people who already have some knowledge of neurology.The book is very interesting to read but reader should be prepared that she/he won't be able to go through it quickly.But considering what reader will be able to learn due to its reading, the time invested is very much justified. less

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