The article under consideration is called “Brain Regions that Encode Words, Grammar, Story Identified”. It has been written by Byron Spice and published online In ScienceDaily on November 26, 2014. The author describes a discovery made by Leila Wehbe and colleagues regarding the brain regions responsible for different reading processes. In order to establish the connection between encoding words, story, grammar and activation of different regions in the brain, eight study participants have been scanned with FMRI, as they read a chapter called “the Sorcerer’s Stone” of Harry Potter book.
A detailed analysis of the scans, enabled scientists to get a better understanding of the brain processes responsible for finding the meaning of words and estimating the relationships between characters (Spice, 2014). The participants were reading a story in a near-normal manner. They could see one word of a passage appearing every half second on the screen. 195 detailed features were identified for every word, including the number of letters , part of speech, etc. The activation of every cubic centimeter of the brain per word segment was analyzed with the help of the machine learning algorithm. Thus, the scientists managed to see the activation of certain brain regions in relation to certain features. For instance, parts of the passages associated with flying were found to activate the same brain regions that are normally used for perceiving motion of people, while the characters mentioned in the chapter activated the areas responsible for processing individual’s intentions.

The author of the article assures of the study’s reliability and the features that differentiate it from the previously conducted researches. Unlike the previous experiments involving the analysis of single words or phrases, a study of Wehbe and colleagues could simultaneously analyze multiple cognitive processes. The author claims that this discovery has a potential benefit in diagnosing and studying such reading disorders, as dyslexia. Results of this research could as well serve in the rehabilitation of the stroke patients and those experiencing troubles in learning a new language.

Many functions of the human brain are still a mystery for scientists. We hardly understand how it operates, especially in the domains of reading, which involves some complex multitasking. Having more reliable information about the brain functions could help numerous students experiencing learning difficulties. I used to have a friend suffering from Dyslexia in the high school. Though being a smart and highly creative thinker, he stumbled on words, had troubles with accurate and fluent word recognition, could not correctly spell and was not able to read as many words in a text as others.

Though scientists have been studying dyslexia and its relation to the brain function since the very disorder was first discovered, there still exists no efficient method for its management or prevention. In my opinion the importance of the above described study is immense. It suggests that instead of using the semantic concepts only, a human brain relies on memories of the previous experiences, which implies some high-level brain functions. If results of this study could be used to figure out how does the dyslexic brain functions in comparison to a normal one, scientists could potentially find an efficient treatment and help millions of dyslexic students all over the world to overcome their language difficulties.