Neuroscientific development and technology throughout the past several years elucidates many ways that reading changes and strengthens the wiring of the neuronal connections in our brains. Reading helps sharpen the temporal and frontal lobes and the angular and supramarginal gyri, fortifying phonological awareness, speech production, comprehension, and grammatical connectivity. Reading also helps accelerate the ability to problem solve, access stored information, and complete language-based communication. Beginning at birth, sound acquisition and language development expand and the brain is primed to develop skills required for reading when the time comes. The brain begins reconfiguring and creating a foundation for reading through forming sound differentiations and phonetic discrepancies. Therefore, by the time the child is ready to start reading, the brain has already completed sensory coordination to stimulate effective reading comprehension. The various parts of the brain that assist in reading development mentioned above include;

1. The Temporal Lobe

• Primarily responsible for phonological awareness and discriminating different sounds

• Occipital-temporal region located at the back helps with fluent reading through storing images and the meaning of words. This area helps with swift identification of words, letters, and language without having to sound them out.

• The parietal-temporal region located towards the back functions to separate words into sounds

2. The Frontal Lobe

• Responsible for creating speech sounds. Helps you think about pronouncing written words. It utilizes different functions for efficient speech, such as reading fluency, understanding and using grammar, and then producing speech

3. The Angular and Supra-Marginal Gyrus

• Link or integrate multiple parts of the brain to perform the reading activity. This connects letters to form a word enabling you to read out loud

Evolution Of Our Flexible Brain

The Earth is over 4 billion years old, human evolution commenced about 200,000 years ago, and the visual cortex (part of the brain that processes visual information) has evolved for millions of years before reading and writing existed. Reading developed approximately 5,000 years ago, possibly due to its requirement for making sense of the letters and further neural circuitry. Neural circuitry essentially stems from the idea that when a child learns to read, brain regions and structures begin to differentiate and adapt to associate words and phrases with the sound of language. Norton et al., 2015 studied reading circuitry through hypothesizing and measuring functional activities that connect the visual, auditory, and language circuitries. The key to understanding the evolutionary transition from language to reading and writing development is determining how and why humans began to make repetitive marks and patterns. Extensive brain imaging of the visual cortex provides important insight into how the brain perceives simple patterns. The early visual cortex (EVC), the area where visual information from the eye first affects the cortex, processes these signals and encodes simple patterns. The EVC has neurons coding for lines, edges, and "T" junctions which activate the visual cortex in different forms. Since lines, intersections, and angle are very abundant in nature, they elucidate cues for the geometric layout of objects. The brain is able to react to these cues by utilizing "Gestalt principles". Gestalt principles are crucial in stimulating the mind to automatically process patterns from a signal. Through simple construction of forms, humans developed complex, higher-order visual areas of the brain, permitting efficient visual processing and experiences. Concentration on geometric patterns evolved about 700,000 years ago, which enabled humans to start creating refined and symmetric "Acheulean tools." Toolmaking sparked a concentration of patterns in the natural environment like accidentally making marks on rocks, shells, and ochre. Then over time, these patterns were repeatedly copied by others, turned into engraved patterns, and constructed into a written language. Writing involves the premotor cortex of the brain.

Stretch Your Brain

Though it sounds silly, the brain is highly malleable and able to adapt according to different activities, experiences, and stimulations. The hippocampus is essential for learning and memory and the thalamus's primary function is to relay motor and sensory information while regulating consciousness and alertness. Since reading is a relatively new activity for humans, our brains have not evolved a specific brain structure for reading alone. Therefore, many areas of the brain work together and sometimes must "reconfigure" to learn new skills. According to Langley in How Reading Changes Your Brain, an area of the brain for recognizing complicated objects like faces, called the left fusiform gyrus must adapt to help us decipher differences between letters and words.