This🙏.

Awesome discovery, this is very important.

Humans are born with brains ‘prewired’ to see words

Humans are born with a part of the brain that is prewired to be receptive to seeing words and letters, setting the stage at birth for people to learn how to read, a new study suggests.

Analyzing brain scans of newborns, researchers found that this part of the brain – called the “visual word form area” (VWFA) – is connected to the language network of the brain.

“That makes it fertile ground to develop a sensitivity to visual words – even before any exposure to language,” said Zeynep Saygin, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.

The VWFA is specialized for reading only in literate individuals. Some researchers had hypothesized that the pre-reading VWFA starts out being no different than other parts of the visual cortex that are sensitive to seeing faces, scenes or other objects, and only becomes selective to words and letters as children learn to read or at least as they learn language.

“We found that isn’t true. Even at birth, the VWFA is more connected functionally to the language network of the brain than it is to other areas,” Saygin said. “It is an incredibly exciting finding.”

Saygin, who is a core faculty member of Ohio State’s Chronic Brain Injury Program, conducted the study with graduate students Jin Li and Heather Hansen and assistant professor David Osher, all in psychology at Ohio State. Their results were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The researchers analyzed fMRI scans of the brains of 40 newborns, all less than a week old, who were part of the Developing Human Connectome Project. They compared these to similar scans from 40 adults who participated in the separate Human Connectome Project.

The VWFA is next to another part of visual cortex that processes faces, and it was reasonable to believe that there wasn’t any difference in these parts of the brain in newborns, Saygin said.

As visual objects, faces have some of the same properties as words do, such as needing high spatial resolution for humans to see them correctly.

But the researchers found that, even in newborns, the VWFA was different from the part of the visual cortex that recognizes faces, primarily because of its functional connection to the language processing part of the brain.

“The VWFA is specialized to see words even before we’re exposed to them,” Saygin said.

“It’s interesting to think about how and why our brains develop functional modules that are sensitive to specific things like faces, objects, and words,” said Li, who is lead author of the study.

“Our study really emphasized the role of already having brain connections at birth to help develop functional specialization, even for an experience-dependent category like reading.”

The study did find some differences in the VWFA in newborns and adults.

“Our findings suggest that there likely needs to be further refinement in the VWFA as babies mature,” Saygin said.

“Experience with spoken and written language will likely strengthen connections with specific aspects of the language circuit and further differentiate this region’s function from its neighbors as a person gains literacy.”

Saygin’s lab at Ohio State is currently scanning the brains of 3- and 4-year-olds to learn more about what the VWFA does before children learn to read and what visual properties the region is responsive to.

The goal is to learn how the brain becomes a reading brain, she said. Learning more about individual variability may help researchers understand differences in reading behavior and could be useful in the study of dyslexia and other developmental disorders.

“Knowing what this region is doing at this early age will tell us a bit more about how the human brain can develop the ability to read and what may go wrong,” Saygin said. “It is important to track how this region of the brain becomes increasingly specialized.”

Great advice!

I am Groot.

the awakening … BY EDWARD FOSTER

Science fiction, double feature.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Beautiful. Thank you 🙏! I find your art brilliant!

The shapeshifter…

I have a big print of this piece at the end of my bed. I look at it every morning while I try to reload this programme. Somedays when I look at this piece it feels brand new, I scan around and look at each part and think hah! how did that happen? Otherdays I look at it and ache because it’s an image from the past that contains lots of different memories. I also feel like those judgemental eyes mock me, because I know I can do so much better but I have yet to make that leap and do so.

They’re screaming at me what the hell are you waiting for? But all I want to do is to fall asleep and forget any of it ever happened.

I have a funny relationship with this artwork and I guess myself, always at war and in awe.

Have a great weekend everyone!

#art #print #tiger #shapeshifter #digitalart #owl #eagle #peacock #dream

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bto20R9HHd3/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=102t6flanx38j

Red hair, tall and from the North. Sounds Neanderthal. Perhaps a common culture across N. America and Europe during the Ice age.

Lovelock Cave: A Tale of Giants or A Giant Tale of Fiction?

The Paiutes, a Native-American tribe indigenous to parts of Nevada, have an oral tradition that they told to early white settlers about a race of red-haired, white giants that their ancestors referred to as the “Si- Te-Cah” and which dwelt in an ancient cave known as Lovelock. During the early part of the 20th century archaeologists found thousands of artifacts inside this cave leading to a lengthy excavation of the site and leading to some speculation that the Paiute legend was real.

I know, right?

It’s amusing yet disappointing and upsetting how often in my life I’ve agreed with someone, but they ended up never seeing it because I asked them questions or contradicted some minor detail and they were operating from a state of mind where anything other than profuse agreement is interpreted as opposition.

Awesome ! I have always self identified as Vulcan. Mr. Spock was my role model at puberty.

Do you believe that being asexual or aromantic makes someone inherently lgbt?

I think that the phrase “inherently LGBT” is fundamentally misleading.  It’s not a set thing that exists on its own, but rather an alliance of community, a coalition of people with similar (but not identical) experiences and social goals, resulting from an immutable part of their nature that pertains to gender or sexuality.  At various points in history, different groups that are now considered “inherently LGBT” have been excluded from this coalition.  No one who is well-informed and not pushing an agenda could reasonably claim that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and communities all have the same needs or goals, but they can all benefit from an alliance that fights for their mutual gain.  So can other groups, including (but not limited to) asexual and aromantic people.

I almost always advocate for a more inclusive model, with regard to gender and sexuality as well as in other contexts.  I believe that unity and inclusivity is the road toward strength and protection, the acquisition of rights and privileges denied, and a richer and healthier community.  I’ve discussed this a bit before (some examples: [X] [X] [X]), albeit in a more general sense.  Individuals who are inappropriately hateful and horribly mistreat others do not belong in community spaces, but that applies to any member of any group, and is not grounds for exclusion of the whole group.

In short, then, I believe that while no asexual or aromantic person should feel compelled to be a part of the community if they do not wish to be, I think that the LGBT+ community should welcome any aromantic or asexual person who wants to be included with open arms.