An anatomical signature for literacy

摘要: Language is a uniquely human ability that evolved at some point in the roughly 6,000,000 years since and chimpanzee lines diverged. Even most linguistically impoverished environments, children naturally develop sophisticated language systems. In contrast, reading learnt skill does not without intensive tuition practice. Learning to read likely involve ontogenic structural brain changes, but these are nearly impossible isolate owing concurrent biological, environmental social maturational changes. Colombia, guerrillas re-integrating into mainstream society learning for first time as adults. This presents unique opportunity investigate how literacy changes brain, complications present children. Here we compare scans from those who adults (late-literates) with carefully matched set of illiterates. Late-literates had more white matter splenium corpus callosum grey bilateral angular, dorsal occipital, middle temporal, left supramarginal superior temporal gyri. The importance regions skilled was investigated early literates, We found anatomical connections linking right angular occipital gyri through area where higher late-literates than illiterates; reading, relative object naming, increased interhemispheric functional connectivity between gyri; activation gyrus exerts top-down modulation on information flow gyrus. These findings demonstrate identified interact during literates.