Learning to read and write rewires adult brain in six months

Let's hear it for the written word. Learning to read can have profound effects on the wiring of the adult brain – even in regions that aren't usually associated with reading and writing. That's what Michael Skeide of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues found when they taught a group of illiterate adults in rural India to read and write. Skeide and his colleagues wanted to study how culture changes the brain, so focused on reading and writing. These cultural inventions have appeared only recently in our evolutionary history, so we haven't had a chance to evolve specific genes for such skills.