Customer Reviews:
 Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. December 9, 2009
James T. Ranney (Philadelphia, PA)
51 out of 53 found this review helpful
An astonishing work, explaining convincingly how mankind acquired (only in the last 5,000 years) a skill we all take for granted: reading. The brief explanation, as I (a non-scientist) understand it? Reading takes quite a lot of brain computer firepower (because of the multiple processing required), such that our eventually huge frontal lobes were necessary. The portions of our brain used initially for visual recognition lead to the wiring of our brains to recognize certain key shapes, shapes that eventually become the key "strokes" used in writing (by all cultures) such that they are in effect structured into our brain's learning algorithm, creating specific neuronal circuits and structures, previously used as visual pathways. It's an amazing story, well told by one well placed to present the many brain science studies (many of which he conducted) which fully explicate the story. Also numerous "side-stories" worth hearing: e.g., re the origins of our alphabet, along with occasional hints of possible future evolution of the human brain. An A+ book.
Superb Research and Enthralling Style! March 1, 2010
Nathan Mccune
Although one of the main topics covered in this book is dyslexia and how it may be a culturally defined disorder as well as a neurological disorder, the book covers a wide range of data. Dehaene is very thorough, offering extensive fMRI maps of up to date research on modules of the brain pertaining to reading. The book may be hard to wade through for those of us unfamiliar with extensive neurological terminology, but Dehaene works hard to ensure that his readers understand the issues. A very worthwhile read for any linguist, cognitive scientist, or anyone simply interested in the evolution of reading in our ambitious pleistocene minds.
 Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention February 8, 2010
Sacramento Book Review (Sacramento, CA)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
How does the brain interpret two-dimensional squiggles on a page into sounds with distinct meanings? Anyone even slightly curious about the answer should pick up this book. Mathematician, scientist and psychologist Stanislas Dehaene presents an intricate look into the brain's ability to read and also how this extraordinary feat is accomplished. Director of the Cognitive Neuro-Imaging Unit in Saclay, France, Dehaene included accurate brain-scan images and diagrams enabling the reader to better understand the "cerebral" prose.
Notwithstanding a rather obvious acceptance of Darwin's theories, Dehaene convincingly explains such intriguing subjects as dyslexia, the learning instinct and symmetry perception. The author's deep appreciation for the human brain's ability to learn and use spoken and written language paints the pages with a reverence which is quite refreshing in a science tome. Dehaene points out that not only are humans unique in this ability, but it is their desire to learn this amazing art which sets them above every other species on earth. An excellent--if slightly biased--book full of remarkable data and images on the inner working of the reading brain.
Reviewed by Meredith Greene
 Good detail in some areas, mostly speculative in others February 8, 2010
J. Bohannon
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
The book contains good detail, with what seems to be quite rigorous experimental results as backup, for how the brain learns to recognize letters and words. Dehaene provides a nice walk-through of the reasoning to support his description, drawing on a variety of experiments and studies such as MRI and other types of brain scans, dissection of brains (both human and animal), developmental cognitive studies with children and clinical studies of people with brain lesions.
Dehaene's theory of word recognition covers not just acquisition of English and other alphabetic languages, but also discusses the similarities and differences to reading in Chinese and Japanese, which is revealing. All of this description convincingly supports Dehaene's hypothesis that a specific small region of the brain that he calls the "letterbox" is responsible for invariantly recognizing letters, letter pairs, and so on up to full words.
The book also contains quite a bit of material on dyslexia and on the educational implications of the neurology of reading, but that material appears to be a lot more speculative, not very detailed nor rigorous. In several places, Dehaene points out conflicting studies and briefly describes why he agrees or disagrees with the assertions of each study author, but one is left primarily with a feeling that the subject is complex and largely unsettled. Dehaene makes his recommendations on education, but he is unable to provide much in the way of well-supported positive recommendations. Mainly, he provides a convincing case against the "whole word" approach to teaching reading, based on the details of how the brain learns to recognize letters and words.
Dehaene repeatedly explains that efficient learning of reading requires a dynamic interplay between learning to recognize letters and words and learning to associate spellings with phonemes. Unfortunately, there is very little detail in the book about the science (either neurological or linguistic) of phonemes or about what is known about the parts of the brain that learn and process phonemes. The details in the book focus primarily on the visual aspects of letters and words.
Also missing is a description of how the brain handles the higher level processes of reading such as scanning a page, learning rules of syntax, constructing a cognitive model of the meaning of the text. There is no science given in this book to describe how words get associated with meanings.
In summary, the book is a nice lay-person's introduction to some of the science behind how the brain learns to recognize letters, and to some extent, words, but it is decidedly lacking in describing how the brain reads (if we acknowledge that reading is more than just recognizing individual words!) Take away the highly speculative sections and the polemics on educational policy and that leaves perhaps 30% of the book which is truly interesting. It would have been a much better book if it left out the speculations and instead included more known science on the aspects of reading that were mostly left out (syntax, phonemes, meaning).
 disappointing February 1, 2010
Gabriel Farkas (venezuela)
3 out of 14 found this review helpful
the book has some profound weaknesses that make it, surprisingly, difficult to read. I didn't find from the beginning a structure to guide me through so much interesting information. Didn't find either a proper framework were reading fits into all the information processing functions the brain performs, specially very little reference to the point that reading comes as a substitute to hearing, and therefore totally limited to what the tongue and ear can perform. Still waiting for a book that puts the grandiose processes that happen in our brain that: observes nature; converts what observes into rules/symbols; and then finds an agreement between other human beings to share it, via voice, reading, or any other means, for whatever purpose they decide: control, teamwork, pleasure sharing, etc.
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