"It happens in a blink. Your eyes glance over a page, and letters become words. Words transform into meaning. Sentences unfurl into stories or arguments.
Q: But what exactly happens in your brain when you read?
A new review by neuroscientists at the Max Planck Institute for
It shows how different types of reading — silently or aloud, genuine words or gibberish, judgments or comprehension — each have their own neural signature.
The findings confirmed that reading taps into the brain’s classical
But each level of reading brought unique activity:
Letter reading activated just a narrow zone in the left occipital cortex, a region tied to visual processing.
Word reading engaged wider networks, including parts of the frontal and parietal lobes.
Sentence reading added further recruitment from areas involved in syntax and meaning-making, especially the middle and superior temporal gyri.
Text reading required coordination hubs like the precentral gyrus and supplementary motor area — likely reflecting how we hold complex information in working memory.
That progression is striking: the brain doesn’t just scale up the same processes. It reconfigures its activity based on the demands of the task.
Word reading engaged wider networks, including parts of the frontal and parietal lobes.
Sentence reading added further recruitment from areas involved in syntax and meaning-making, especially the middle and superior temporal gyri.
Text reading required coordination hubs like the precentral gyrus and supplementary motor area — likely reflecting how we hold complex information in working memory.
That progression is striking: the brain doesn’t just scale up the same processes. It reconfigures its activity based on the demands of the task.
One of the study’s most intriguing findings lies in how different reading styles trigger different brain activity. Overt reading — reading out loud — lit up auditory and motor regions, including the left insula and superior temporal cortex. These regions help us process sound and coordinate speech.
But when people read silently (covert reading), another system
In other words, silently reading a sentence is less passive than it seems. It’s a high-order mental performance — speech without sound.
To further tease apart how the brain processes meaning, the team contrasted how we read real words versus pseudowords — strings like “sproke” or “glem.”
Real words triggered greater activity in regions associated with memory and meaning, like the angular gyrus, the middle temporal gyrus, and the orbitofrontal cortex. These areas help us retrieve known concepts and integrate them into what we’re reading.
Pseudowords, on the other hand, activated areas linked to phonological decoding — sounding out unfamiliar combinations. The precentral gyrus, pars opercularis of the IFG, and even right-hemisphere regions like the superior lateral occipital cortex all showed stronger engagement.
What emerges from this sweeping study is not a single “reading center” in the brain, but a flexible system that shifts depending on the demands of the text and the nature of the task."
ZME Science
