In practice, the brain reads familiar words as images, distinguishing at a quick glance, without a detailed analysis of the letters, terms that sound the same but are spelled differently.
This is a theory that contradicts the common belief that in order to understand a word, it is necessary that we pronounce it completely during every reading.
Two separate tasks
Those people who read sporadically have to pronounce the words in the brain when they read, a long and quite busy process", explained Laurie Glezer, researcher at the University Center "Georgetown" (Washington) and author of the study.
"Even expert readers should do this in some cases, in those words they don't know. But when they manage to become fluent, there is no need to pronounce those familiar terms in the mind. They can read immediately."
The researchers tested word recognition in 27 adult readers in two different studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Words with the same sound but different spellings activated different sets of neurons, as if the brain had to use two different entries in a dictionary.
If the sound of the word had an effect on this cerebral area (the visual area for word form, located on the left side of the visual cortex) the two terms would have activated the same or similar neurons, but this did not happen .
Each has its own task
The discovery shows that this cerebral area only processes visual information and not the sound of a word that is actually analyzed in a separate area, in which the words 'hair' and 'hare' activate the same neurons.
A study by the same working group, published in 2015, showed that the brain reads familiar words as images, interpreting them as single visual objects and without analyzing the pronunciation.
New research clarifies that different word components, images and sounds are handled by different areas. This discovery may shed light on the mechanisms at the origin of some reading disorders, such as dyslexia. /Telegraph/
