American psychologists have shown that people are born with a zone of the visual cortex, which is predisposed to the visual perception of words and letters, which creates the basis for subsequent learning to read and write.. The study included 40 infants less than a week old and 40 adults aged 26-36.. Article published in Scientific Reports.

It is believed that the visual cortex zone, which is responsible for the visual perception of letters and words (VWFA), is no different from other parts of the visual cortex, and it becomes selective for words and letters only when children learn to read and write.. But a number of studies forced us to look at this issue differently: the future function of VWFA can be largely determined at birth by the connection with speech centers, suggesting the innate readiness of VWFA to provide the function of perception of letters and words. For example, based on this relationship in illiterate five-year-old children, researchers were able to predict the location of VWFA at age eight, when they learned to read and write.. These works are not enough. To demonstrate that VWFA functions are inherently defined, it is necessary to show that VWFA's relationships with speech areas are similar in neonates and adults..

Jin Li from Ohio State University and colleagues took up this issue.. Psychologists analyzed the results of fMRI brain scans of 40 infants under one week old who participated in the Developing Human Connectome Project and compared them with similar images of 40 adults aged 26-36 from the Human Connectome Project..

As a result, scientists found a closer connection between speech centers (primarily, Wernicke's and Broca's zones) with VWFA than with neighboring regions in the visual cortex (p Key words:.