New data on brain function will help treat dyslexia

Scientists from Skoltech and the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology (IVND) The Russian Academy of Sciences experimentally studied the operation of a rapid semantic speech processing system. Their research showed that reading comprehension occurs after 150 milliseconds, although previously it was believed that this happens several times slower.

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The discovery will clarify the fundamental principles of the brain, as well as offer new treatments for dyslexia and other speech disorders caused, for example, by stroke.

"We have found several brain regions that are responsible for rapid semantic processing. Such a system has been discussed before, but this is the first time we have studied it using real texts using magnetic encephalography. Usually, such studies show the perception of individual words, but we used real texts of fairy tales. We took them from different cultures, because depending on them, the text can be organized in different ways," said Gurgen Soghoyan, a researcher at the Skoltech Neurocenter and the Institute of Internal Medicine of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

A group of several dozen participants read fairy tales from the screen. First, they were shown the first word of the sentence, after 150 milliseconds it disappeared and the next one appeared, and so the whole text. After each story, the researchers asked the participants questions about what they had read. It turned out that at this rate, understanding was practically not disrupted and all participants in the experiment understood the general plot of each fairy tale. People usually read more slowly, focusing for about 200 milliseconds on each word.

During the reading, the participants recorded a magnetic encephalogram (MEG). The MEG data showed that if people did not expect to see the next word, then their brain activity was higher. This phenomenon is already known in science — such an increased response to semantically unusual stimuli is called N400. However, in previous studies, this reaction was recorded about 400 milliseconds after the presentation of the word (hence the name). In the same study, words were displayed at a speed of 150 milliseconds, that is, 2.5 times faster. This means that the mechanism for recognizing unusual words can be activated earlier than 400 milliseconds. This largely changes the usual picture of how the brain processes speech.