Development of neural systems for reading

Abstract

Functional and structural neuroimaging studies of adult readers have provided a deeper understanding of the neural basis of reading, yet such findings also elicit new questions about how developing neural systems come to support this learned ability. A developmental cognitive neuroscience approach provides insights into how skilled reading emerges in the developing brain, yet also raises new methodological challenges. This review focuses on functional changes that occur during reading acquisition in cortical regions associated with both the perception of visual words and spoken language, and it examines how such functional changes differ within developmental reading disabilities. We integrate these findings within an interactive specialization framework of functional development and propose that such a framework may provide insights into how individual differences at several levels of observation (genetics, white matter tract structure, functional organization of language, cultural organization of writing systems) impact the emergence of neural systems involved in reading ability and disability.