Brain Regions Recycled to Acquire New Skills
The brain regions that are responsible for recognising images later on enlarge to process written words, according to a study by researchers of Stanford University. In a study of group of children aged 5-12 using MRI techniques it was found that areas that were stimulated in the ventral temporal cortex (VTC) by the recognition of face and images increased with age and those were previously activated on seeing hands, legs etc. Compared to 5-9 year olds, the teenagers had twice the volume of the word-selective region in VTC while the limb-selective region was halved. The decrease in limb-selectivity is directly linked to increase in word-and-face-selectivity. This provides evidence of cortical recycling during childhood development. The findings may help in prevention and developing treatment strategies for learning disorders.
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