What is it about humans that makes them so different from the other inhabitants of this planet?
It is not our big brains: many species do just fine with a much simpler model.
It is not our instincts and intuitions: many species have us beaten there as well.
And it is certainly not our empathy or compassion: we can see that those are highly developed in dozens of other species.
The real difference seems to be the way in which we can communicate information that endures. Communications that survive us and can be passed to people that we have never met.
Complex languages that were able to meld the experiences of many senses were the first step. We can tell stories that contain much more than information: they contain and evoke emotions, memories and even tastes and smells.
The second step is far more recent, and it the strange alchemy that in the last few thousand years enabled our ancestors to record, interpret and teach the significance of squiggles and scratchings.
This engaging book focuses on a question that many of us have asked at some time or other. How did we come upon the unlikely skill call reading? How did our brains achieve this extraordinary feat, working only with neurological systems that had never tried to make sense of systematized rule-based visually presented material?
And what happens in our brain when our eyes scan a line of type? Why do some of us, or some of our children, find it difficult to process the visual information locked in words?
Maryanne Wolf is a professor at Tufts University, where she directs the Center for Reading and Language Research and in this book she offers explanations for these and many other questions. The main thrust of her research is cognitive and biological so the book focuses on writing and the evolution of the brain. However, she does not ignore the cultural and historical contexts in which writing developed.
She focuses on three fundamental principles that operate throughout the human brain:
1. The capacity to make new connections among older structures
2. The capacity to form or appropriate regions of the brain that are specialized for recognizing and extracting patterns in a mass of information
3. The ability to learn to recruit and connect information from these regions of the brain
As a rider to the last point, the recruiting and connecting of different areas of the brain occurs automatically. If you think about someone you will usually be able to associate a visual image of him or her with a sound, smell and emotion. This associative process usually happens without conscious effort.
Maryanne's work indicates that these three principles of design provide the neural machinery essential to reading, and she spends some time explaining the evolution of what she calls the "reading brain." This is not a dry academic exercise: understanding the evolution of reading promises to help us make sense of problems like dyslexia, and it is her insights into that common problem that occupy the second half of the book.
She reveals that that one of her sons suffers from this disability, and discusses something not widely known. There are a number of subtypes of dyslexia, and, as is common with neurological deficits, the brain often compensates. Giving people special talent in fields that emphasize pattern recognition and spatial creativity. I knew someone with disabling dyslexia who set about building a house. Without any kind of diagrams or written plan he was able to calculate the precise amount, shape and size of the timber that would be needed. When he finished the job several months later he was left with only one two foot plank. The remainder of his calculations were spot on. And it does seem that it is the brain that bestows this kind of gift, rather than the person over-compensating for a disability.
Maryanne speaks approvingly of the extraordinary insights of one of my mentors, the late Norman Geschwind. He and a colleague did some fascinating work on a region of the brain called the planum temporale, sadly misspelled in the index. So it surprised me that she did not mention any of the work on disturbances of language with relative preservation of reading in schizophrenia, It would have been interesting to have her take on that.
So why "Proust and the Squid?" Maryanne uses the French novelist Marcel Proust as a metaphor. He believed that reading gives us access to countless different realities that would otherwise be sealed from us. The squid is to pay tribute to the creature who has given so much to neurological research.
I found the book an easy read, but I am a neuroscientist with a particular interest in thought and language, and I always try to imagine what a book might hold for a non-specialist. In places it may be a little difficult for the general reader. Before submitting this review I asked some friends to look over a few sections, and some left them slightly baffled.
I think that scientists have a responsibility to explain their work to the public that pays most of the bills. But I know from personal experience that popularization does not always come easily to people trained to write and communicate in a cautious, unemotional and reserved tone. It is different in the classroom, where the good teacher is expected to lighten up a bit, and pepper his or her teaching with humor and anecdotes. But once we start typing, our old habits return!
I mention this because Maryanne shares the concern of many, that the advent of the computer culture may lead to the atrophy of the "reading brain," which could become no more than an occasionally used device for communicating factual data stripped of all emotion. We already know that many young people fail to comprehend that the abbreviations of the text message cannot be used in school reports. "Texting" is easier and does not required sustained attention. Since humans were never genetically designed to read, such simple solutions may wreck the "reading brain." If young children are not read to, they nearly always fail to learn to read well themselves. Is it already too late for the youngest generation?
This is a fine book by a world expert. It does require a little effort, but it is well worthwhile. I particular recommend it to people who have children with dyslexia. I would also recommend it to people who have dyslexia themselves, but I do not think that an audio version is available yet.
Richard G. Petty, MD, author of
Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life
