Figure 14.

Learning to read recycles a network of brain areas involved in vision and spoken language. The regions in color are those affected by reading acquisition: their activity in response to a written sentence increases with reading score, from pure illiterates to expert readers. Literacy affects the brain in two different ways: it specializes the visual areas for written letters, particularly in a region of the left hemisphere called the “visual word form area,” and it activates the circuits of spoken language through vision.