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23rd out of 130 books
—
72 voters
Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention
A renowned cognitive neuroscientist?s fascinating and highly informative account of how the brain acquires reading
How can a few black marks on a white page evoke an entire universe of sounds and meanings? In this riveting investigation, Stanislas Dehaene provides an accessible account of the brain circuitry of reading and explores what he calls the ?reading paradox?: Our c...more
How can a few black marks on a white page evoke an entire universe of sounds and meanings? In this riveting investigation, Stanislas Dehaene provides an accessible account of the brain circuitry of reading and explores what he calls the ?reading paradox?: Our c...more
Hardcover, 400 pages
Published
November 12th 2009
by Viking Adult
(first published January 1st 2009)
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May 18, 2010
David
added it
This book seemed a little forbidding at first, The first chapter was readable enough, but Chapter 2, which is clearly critical to an understanding of the rest of the book, got very hairy very fast. Scads of diagrams of the brains from various angles and a veritable cornucopia of fMRI scans, rounded out by that sad, inevitable procession of case studies whose weirdly specific malfunction* proved essential in nailing the link between a particular brain activity and the location of the region that...more
Dehaene is somewhat difficult to read; he is discursive and not spectacularly well organized. But it’s generally worth wading through the verbiage for the information. This one is about the nitty-gritty details of brain structure and function as they relate to the skill of reading. Recent advances in brain imaging have given us surprising new insights.
It is indeed astonishing that readers from all cultures almost invariably use precisely the same relatively minute portion of the brain for this a...more
It is indeed astonishing that readers from all cultures almost invariably use precisely the same relatively minute portion of the brain for this a...more
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My guess is that this book will only be of interest to people who care a great deal about brain research; it's a jargon-heavy, very detailed analysis of what happens in the brain when we read -- and why we can read at all. We evolved to get quick fixes on shapes in nature, for our survival. So when we moved to farming and larger communities, away from hunting and gathering, and we needed to keep records, we used the same simple shapes we saw in nature -- circles, triangles, stick figures. Letter...more
1 like
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This joins the go-to books on my shelf for anyone who cares about how we read and how we learn to do it. It's next to Maryanne Wolf's 'Proust and the Squid' and the already-dated 'Understanding Dyslexia' by Sally Shaywitz.
It's definitely denser matter than the other two, though, and taking it in requires effort. There were a couple of things that made the task harder than it needed to be.
Since 'Reading in the Brain' generally maintains a conversational tone and does not talk down to lay people,...more
It's definitely denser matter than the other two, though, and taking it in requires effort. There were a couple of things that made the task harder than it needed to be.
Since 'Reading in the Brain' generally maintains a conversational tone and does not talk down to lay people,...more
1 like
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like
· see review
Author Dehaene, who has some very impressive credentials, has made an exhaustive exploration of how the human brain reads. What he has concluded is that we ‘recycle’ parts of the brain that were evolved to do other things. Humans have been evolving for several million years, but only reading for a few thousand- a new structure just for reading couldn’t have been created in that time. And reading arose in several geographical areas around the same time- the chances of a special mutation for readi...more
Dehaene offers a very technical explanation of what happens in the brain when one reads. He suggests that although there is no specific "reading gene", there appears to be evidence that there are structures or mechanisms that facilitate reading within the brain, features that are recycled in the purpose from what nature had originally intended. He is informed by a good deal of research that shows some universal similarities suggesting that human creativity did not come up with the various alphab...more
Ouch. My brain hurts. This was the hardest book to read that I've finished in years. The writing was difficult, the subject more so. And the subject interfered with reading - it was hard to read something about how we read without immediately trying it out on what I was reading. Even the font was difficult. The author's first language is almost certainly not English and that comes through as well.
And yet, what it had to say about how we read was incredibly fascinating. Whether on AI or on handwr...more
And yet, what it had to say about how we read was incredibly fascinating. Whether on AI or on handwr...more
One of the last chapters opens with an epigraph from Umberto Eco "If God existed, he would be a library."
Which tickled my fancy, but doesn't necessarily portray Dehaene's stance about how inborn structural properties of our brain are co-opted and retrained (neuronal recycling)in order for humans to develop the ability to recognize words and understand them (no matter if Chinese or French.)
"Recycling, on the other hand, implies that before cortical regions convert to other uses, they already poss...more
Which tickled my fancy, but doesn't necessarily portray Dehaene's stance about how inborn structural properties of our brain are co-opted and retrained (neuronal recycling)in order for humans to develop the ability to recognize words and understand them (no matter if Chinese or French.)
"Recycling, on the other hand, implies that before cortical regions convert to other uses, they already poss...more
I previously read Caplan (Harvard Medical School) in his 1996 book on "Language". He discussed the psychology experiments that revealed that the brain contained 8 different dictionaries, organised conceptually into a tree by speech/text, input/output, and whole-word/grapheme_phoneme.
This model formed the basis of theories on dyslexia.
Now Dehaene updates this psychological model into a neuroscience model, based on functional MRI and other experimental techniques, applied to show brain activities...more
This model formed the basis of theories on dyslexia.
Now Dehaene updates this psychological model into a neuroscience model, based on functional MRI and other experimental techniques, applied to show brain activities...more
I began this book half a year ago and put it aside when I found it frustratingly technical. I returned to it this month and found the reading much easier and more enjoyable. (Maybe that says something about reading in MY brain.)
Dehaene's most interesting statements are about the evolution of language; he contends that our brains did not adapt to the new concept of reading so much as we created alphabets made up of images that "fit" our brain as it already existed.
He also takes to task the curr...more
Dehaene's most interesting statements are about the evolution of language; he contends that our brains did not adapt to the new concept of reading so much as we created alphabets made up of images that "fit" our brain as it already existed.
He also takes to task the curr...more
It's always great when a scientist who knows a very specialized topic -- in this case cognitive neuroscience -- is also a good writer, who can render accessible what might otherwise be difficult. Dehaene is mostly a delight to read, and several times reading this book, I had to stop and think of how profound it is that reading -- what you're doing at this exact moment if I haven't bored you yet -- is mostly a mystery to scientists. Dehaene goes into great detail to explain precisely what is now...more
Notes so far:
Generic "he". Ugh. Come on, people, it's the 21st century.
From the intro: "Nothing in our evolution could have prepared us to absorb language through vision." So, is he arguing that sign language is as amazing a thing as reading? Checking the index, he doesn't address sign language anywhere.
Didn't end up having time to finish before it had to go back to the library; I'll give it a try later when I have more time and when I'm willing to put up with the generic "he". (The problem with...more
Generic "he". Ugh. Come on, people, it's the 21st century.
From the intro: "Nothing in our evolution could have prepared us to absorb language through vision." So, is he arguing that sign language is as amazing a thing as reading? Checking the index, he doesn't address sign language anywhere.
Didn't end up having time to finish before it had to go back to the library; I'll give it a try later when I have more time and when I'm willing to put up with the generic "he". (The problem with...more
the book is a bit daunting, and is challenging for people with all kinds of interests in the topic of reading. if you have a psycholinguistics/applied linguistics background, you can just skim over the chapters that contain all the detailed research data about what goes on in the brain. dehaene has some interesting chapters about methodology in teaching reading, like what is wrong with whole language education. if your background is strictly stats and data and neuroscience (not me), you might ge...more
Providing strong evidence, supported by up-to-date brain imaging techniques, Dehaene tries to pinpoint how do we read. The hypothesis is a quite stimulating, interesting and thought-provoking one: the acquisition of such a demanding skill as reading is only possible through a neuronal recycling, that is, we can only read because, through learning, some of our neurons inhabiting the occipito-temporal area in the brain's left hemisphere (or, as the author puts it, the brain's "letterbox"), are red...more
Off this article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/art...
"A classical, although often implicit, view in social science is that the human brain, unlike that of other animals, is a learning machine which can adapt to essentially any novel cultural task, however complex. We humans would be liberated from our past instincts and free to invent entirely new cultural forms.
What I am proposing is that the human brain is a much more constrained organ than we think, and that it places strong limits on th...more
"A classical, although often implicit, view in social science is that the human brain, unlike that of other animals, is a learning machine which can adapt to essentially any novel cultural task, however complex. We humans would be liberated from our past instincts and free to invent entirely new cultural forms.
What I am proposing is that the human brain is a much more constrained organ than we think, and that it places strong limits on th...more
I'm sometimes skeptical of books that address cutting edge research, because of the potential to get waded down by conjecture and untested hypotheses. Reading in the brain proved all my reservations unwarranted. Dehaene brilliantly addresses reading as an object recognition task, starting with the basic premises of object recognition. He continues to draw a link between reading and phonological awareness that is fascinating and rigorous, addressing the same issue from multiple points of view (e....more
Feb 08, 2011
Jaycruz Cruz
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Parents and Teachers
Shelves:
non-fiction,
psychology
Review adapted from Tape Noise Diary
Reading in the Brain is by the author and cognitive psychologist Stanislas Dehaene. I read his previous book, The Number Sense, and like that book, this one is a bit heavy on brain research and brain mapping. But once you get past the heavy region name dropping like the occipito lobe and the temporal lobe, you’ll see that this is a wonderful book about the amazing ability we humans are lucky to have: reading.
One the main thesis of the book is that it’s a “mira...more
Reading in the Brain is by the author and cognitive psychologist Stanislas Dehaene. I read his previous book, The Number Sense, and like that book, this one is a bit heavy on brain research and brain mapping. But once you get past the heavy region name dropping like the occipito lobe and the temporal lobe, you’ll see that this is a wonderful book about the amazing ability we humans are lucky to have: reading.
One the main thesis of the book is that it’s a “mira...more
This is one of the most fascinating books I have read in years. Everyone who loves to read should become familiar with how miraculous this skill really is. Dehaene is an interesting and clear writer who backs up his hypotheses with explanations of the neuroscientific experiments that relate to them. In brief, Dehaene sets out to explore how the human brain, which was pretty much done evelolving before writing and reading were invented, manages to read. Along the way he deals with issues like the...more
Took me forever to finish because (a) my brain doesn't process neuroscience research very readily, and (b) this is a very technical, thorough review of all things brain and the process of reading. Can't say it's likely I'll retain the details, but it was interesting to ponder the remarkable versatility with which we interpret a wide range of marks and make sense out of them. My kids were (and are) adept at reading, so it wasn't much of a struggle for them, but this book conveys a sense of what y...more
Reading in the Brain is a very challenging book, but the effort, head-scratching, and re-reading was more than worth it - as an educator, neuro-psychology enthusiast, and appreciator of new and and interesting insights into the ways the people work, this book was one of the more significant texts I've read, ever.
From a content perspective, this book wove well-explained data into profound insight into the ways something specific like reading works, which continually built toward much grander and...more
From a content perspective, this book wove well-explained data into profound insight into the ways something specific like reading works, which continually built toward much grander and...more
It's appropriate that this book should test the reader's stamina as it is about the very fact of the amazing human feat of literacy!
The main thesis is that our brains recycle circuits and neurons designed by evolution for our survival and use them for reading and writing, and in the larger picture, for inventing culture. Brain studies show areas of the brain which are used in all cultures for responding to and processing written language. All writing uses phoneme and morpheme representations wh...more
Early into Reading in the Brain I knew I had found a very good book, packed with research and informed insight. As I began to read it, however, I noticed something odd. I was struggling with the Kindle edition I had purchased. I found myself wanting to physically grapple with the device more than the buttons would allow. The book contains diagrams that are useful to consult when reading the text but I could not easily cross-reference them. The book is lengthy and I found it difficult to track pr...more
This fantastic, well-researched, and illuminating book sheds light on the origins and science in our brains on the very activity from which I make my living. The subject is absolutely fascinating, and the resulting science behind it, the methodology of how it is (and was) tested, and the ultimate reflection on our brains and ourselves as thinking, analytic creatures. It is brilliant, and the author and other scholars that contributed to this work deserve tremendous amounts of praise. I only have...more
Sep 23, 2011
Broodingferret
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
psychology,
biology
Excellent book. Well-presented and strongly supported, Dehaene does a great job defending his thesis, which, simply put, is that the ability to read is made possible by recycling brain structures and processes that originally evolved for the purposes of perceiving the natural world. This "neuronal recycling" is made evident by such data as the homogeneity across cultures regarding the brain areas used while reading, the large amount of base-line graphical similarity in alphabets as different as...more
Les Neurones de la lecture s'ouvre sur une énigme :
comment notre cerveau de primate apprend-il à lire ? Continent celte invention culturelle, -trop récente pour avoir influencé notre évolution, trouve-t-elle sa place dans notre cortex ?
Voici qu'émerge une nouvelle science de la lecture.
Tandis que l'imagerie cérébrale en révèle les circuits corticaux, la psychologie en dissèque les mécanismes. Ces résultats inédits conduisent à une hypothèse scientifique nouvelle.
Au cours de l'acquisition de...more
comment notre cerveau de primate apprend-il à lire ? Continent celte invention culturelle, -trop récente pour avoir influencé notre évolution, trouve-t-elle sa place dans notre cortex ?
Voici qu'émerge une nouvelle science de la lecture.
Tandis que l'imagerie cérébrale en révèle les circuits corticaux, la psychologie en dissèque les mécanismes. Ces résultats inédits conduisent à une hypothèse scientifique nouvelle.
Au cours de l'acquisition de...more
Absolutely an eye-opener! Dehaene skillfully explained how reading, a mundane and often taken-for-granted activity, is nothing but a miraculous feat that we human are blessed with. Being fluent in reading both Chinese and English, I am especially impressed by the findings that show reading the two seemingly different languages utilizes the exact same neural pathway. A highly informative and interesting read!
Bravo! This is a marvelous book - clearly and elegantly written (not in the author's native language) and on the cutting edge of the neuroscience of reading. I savored it, reading a few pages a day for several months. It is well worth becoming acquainted with this brilliant mind and the exciting ideas (many of which are documentable, thanks to fMRI's and other imaging techniques) about how the brain works.
I enjoyed "Proust and the Squid" (Wolf) so much that when I saw this on a new book table I asked for it for Christmas. There's a lot of detail and many illustrations of brain-imaging studies that are hard to comprehend completely. It is a book that bears studying as well as reading. But it's full of fascinating information and makes a great companion to Wolf's book.
My new favorite cognitive neuroscientist. Rarely do people describe non-fiction by saying "it stuck with me," but this work really did. The chapter about the evolution of logographic and letter forms alone is worth the price of admission. What I wouldn't give to study in France under this man (who is, by the way, only in his forties).
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Psychology: Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene | 1 | 5 | Apr 08, 2013 10:37am |
May 24, 2010 09:17am
Universality of crushing on the tooth fairy is, of course, questionable. When one consid...more
updated May 25, 2010 12:26pm