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Reading in the brain : the science and evolution of a human invention / Stanislas Dehaene.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Dehaene, Stanislas.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Reading, Psychology of.
- Reading--Physiological aspects.
- Reading.
- Physical Description:
- xi, 388 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Viking, 2009.
- Summary:
- 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 cortex is the product of millions of years of evolution in a world without writing, so how did it adapt to recognize words?
- Contents:
- Introduction The New Science of Reading 1
- From Neurons to Education 2
- Putting Neurons into Culture 3
- The Mystery of the Reading Ape 4
- Biological Unity and Cultural Diversity 6
- A Reader's Guide 7
- Chapter 1 How Do We Read? 11
- The Eye: A. Poor Scanner 13
- The Search for Invariants 18
- Amplifying Differences 21
- Every Word is a Tree 21
- The Silent Voice 25
- The Limits of Sound 29
- The Hidden Logic of Our Spelling System 31
- The Impossible Dream of Transparent Spelling 34
- Two Routes for Reading 38
- Mental Dictionaries 41
- An Assembly of Daemons 42
- Parallel Reading 46
- Active Letter Decoding 47
- Conspiracy and Competition in Reading 49
- From Behavior to Brain Mechanisms 51
- Chapter 2 The Brains Letterbox 53
- Joseph-Jules Dǰerine's Discovery 54
- Pure Alexia 57
- A Lesion Revealed 58
- Modern Lesion Analysis 61
- Decoding the Reading Brain 65
- Reading is Universal 69
- A Patchwork of Visual Preferences 72
- How Fast Do We Read? 76
- Electrodes in the Brain 78
- Position Invariance 82
- Subliminal Reading 88
- How Culture Fashions the Brain 93
- The Brains of Chinese Readers 97
- Japanese and Its Two Scripts 98
- Beyond the Letterbox 100
- Sound and Meaning 104
- From Spelling to Sound 107
- Avenues to Meaning 109
- A Cerebral Tidal Bore 113
- Brain Limits on Cultural Diversity 116
- Reading and Evolution 119
- Chapter 3 The Reading Ape 121
- Of Monkeys and Men 123
- Neurons for Objects 125
- Grandmother Cells 129
- An Alphabet in the Monkey Brain 133
- Proto-Letters 137
- The Acquisition of Shape 141
- The Learning Instinct 142
- Neuronal Recycling 144
- Birth of a Culture 148
- Neurons for Reading 150
- Bigram Neurons 153
- A Neuronal Word Tree 158
- How Many Neurons for Reading? 160
- Simulating the Reader's Cortex 163
- Cortical Biases That Shape Reading 164
- Chapter 4 Inventing Reading 171
- The Universal Features of Writing Systems 173
- A Golden Section for Writing Systems 176
- Artificial Signs and Natural Shapes 178
- Prehistoric Precursors of Writing 180
- From Counting to Writing 182
- The Limits of Pictography 184
- The Alphabet: A Great Leap Forward 190
- Vowels: The Mothers of Reading 192
- Chapter 5 Learning to Read 195
- The Birth of a Future Reader 197
- Three Steps for Reading 199
- Becoming Aware of Phonemes 200
- Graphemes and Phonemes: A Chicken and Egg Problem 202
- The Orthographic Stage 204
- The Brain of a Young Reader 204
- The Illiterate Brain 208
- What Does Reading Make Us Lose? 210
- When Letters Have Colors 215
- From Neuroscience to Education 218
- Reading Wars 219
- The Myth of Whole-Word Reading 222
- The Inefficiency of the Whole-Language Approach 225
- A Few Suggestions for Educators 228
- Chapter 6 The Dyslexic Brain 235
- What Is Dyslexia? 237
- Phonological Trouble 238
- The Biological Unity of Dyslexia 243
- A Prime Suspect: The Left Temporal Lobe 246
- Neuronal Migrations 249
- The Dyslexic Mouse 251
- The Genetics of Dyslexia 253
- Overcoming Dyslexia 256
- Chapter 7 Reading and Symmetry 263
- When Animals Mix Left and Right 267
- Evolution and Symmetry 269
- Symmetry Perception and Brain Symmetry 270
- Dr. Orton's Modern Followers 274
- The Pros and Cons of a Symmetrical Brain 276
- Single-Neuron Symmetry 277
- Symmetrical Connections 280
- Dormant Symmetry 284
- Breaking the Mirror 288
- Broken Symmetry ... or Hidden Symmetry? 289
- Symmetry, Reading, and Neuronal Recycling 293
- A Surprising Case of Mirror Dyslexia 294
- Chapter 8 Toward a Culture of Neurons 301
- Resolving the Reading Paradox 303
- The Universality of Cultural Forms 304
- Neuronal Recycling and Cerebral Modules 306
- Toward a List of Cultural Invariants 308
- Why Are We the Only Cultural Species? 312
- Uniquely Human Plasticity? 314
- Reading Other Minds 315
- A Global Neuronal Workspace 317.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-375) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780670021109
- 0670021105
- OCLC:
- 315238375
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