I have a Master’s Degree in Psychology from Temple U but no mention of damaged brains anywhere in the syllabi. (I save everything). Political Correctness arose in the mid 70s, and PC meant it wasn’t alright to touch on anything that refers to language, social justice, and cultural sensitivity for its offensive nature.
Could the juncture of the two–saved syllabi and PC–be part of the reason, like anybody with brain damage could possibly be in the class and we might offend them? But I’ll tell you what’s a roadblock to the brain-injured: reading and it’s a huge one!
- Silent reading for comprehension activates semantic processing regions
- Reading aloud engages speech motor areas
- Phonics exercises strengthen sound-to-letter mapping areas
Types of brain damage are diverse and can disrupt reading in recognizable ways depending on the extent of the injury and the location. Stroke, traumatic brain injury, degenerative diseases, or tumors can all affect reading abilities deeply intertwined.
The most well-known reading-related brain damage is dyslexia, characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities, though this is usually developmental rather than acquired.
Acquired reading disorders include alexia, the inability to read despite intact vision and intelligence, and various forms of aphasia that affect reading comprehension. For instance, injury to Broca’s region might leave someone able to understand written words but unable to read aloud continuously, while damage to Wernicke’s region might impair reading comprehension even when the person can pronounce words correctly.
Speech-language pathologists often use reading exercises as part of rehabilitation programs. Reading therapy can help rebuild neural pathways, improve attention and concentration, and restore language skills. Even simple activities like reading aloud can help retrain the brain’s language centers.
Reading can be a powerful tool for brain recovery and rehabilitation. The act of reading engages multiple brain networks simultaneously – visual processing, language comprehension, working memory, and executive function. This makes it excellent cognitive exercise for damaged brains.
Reading is not just a passive activity. It’s a complex cognitive task that employs multiple brain regions. When those regions are damaged, reading can become difficult, but also a powerful tool for recovery. Each of these repeated challenges strengthens and reorganizes neural circuits, much like physical therapy strengthens weakened muscles.
Behavioral Changes
- People may avoid reading due to frustration or fatigue. The brain has fewer resources to allocate after injury — so reading drains energy much faster.
- Reading may feel less rewarding, especially if comprehension is impaired.
- Emotional responses like grief over lost abilities can further reduce motivation.
- Sensory overload (too much light, noise, or visual clutter) can shut down focus.
- Neurological fatigue makes comprehension fade even when word recognition is fine.
- Emotional frustration can make the brain “tighten up,” making the task even harder.
Recognizable Demands
- TBI often affects focus and stamina, making sustained reading harder.
- Injuries may disrupt the brain’s ability to link words into coherent meaning, especially if white matter tracts are damaged.
- Damage to the temporal lobe or Broca’s area can impair processing and word recognition.
- The occipito-temporal cortex helps recognize words by sight; damage here slows reading speed.
- Reading activates multiple brain networks language, memory, attention, and emotion, stimulating healing and rewiring.
- Intensive reading instruction can lead to increased activity in both hemispheres of the brain, compensating for damaged areas.
Emotional and Identity Support
- Reading offers a safe space for emotional processing and imagination.
- It can reassemble people with their pre-damage identity, especially if they were avid readers or writers.
- Following familiar stories, poetry, or lyrics can tap into preserved memory circuits.
Cognitive Rehabilitation
- Reading fiction improves social self-awareness and empathy which are often affected by brain injury.
- The Visualizing and Verbalizing (V/V) program, developed by Lindamood-Bell, focuses on developing concept imagery to improve language comprehension and expression.
Neuroplasticity equals the brain’s ability to rewire, strengthen, or reroute pathways after brain damage. It’s the brain’s fascinating skill to reorganize itself by forging new neural connections and rewiring the brain. Reading is one of the most powerful ways to accomplish this process, especially after brain injury. This rewiring is neuroplasticity in action.
Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid, said the brain wasn’t designed for reading, but it had to reassign existing systems to make it so.
- Auditory and language areas were linked to visual patterns to assign sounds and meaning.
- Memory and attention systems were assigned to store and retrieve these connections, making reading self-starting over time.
- Visual areas at first used for object identification like faces were fitting to recognize letters and words.
Every time you read, your brain makes stronger the circuits that connect vision, language, emotion, and memory. Various writing systems like alphabetic vs. character-based shape the brain in particular ways. The more you read, the more natural these circuits evolve.
Reading can rebuild injured networks by giving strength to multiple regions all at once. It aids to restore language, attention, and executive function, most notably when paired with therapy. Audiobooks can also help to activate neuroplasticity by employing comprehension and imagination.
Dr. Norman Doidge, a leading player on neuroplasticity, emphasizes that even in adulthood, the brain can newly form or reform circuits through conscious mental activity. It means:
- Engaging with age-suitable, accessible texts can enable growth further, and learning disabilities or post-injury challenges are included.
- Reading is a brain workout.
- Avoiding reading stops the improvement of the brain’s being able to do so.
The brain’s ability to recompartmentalize itself means that other brain regions can sometimes compensate for damaged regions. Reading can support this rewiring process, helping uninjured brain regions take over the job previously handled by injured areas.
Learning to read as a child involves huge neuroplastic changes. The brain repurposes visual areas originally evolved for recognizing faces and objects to recognize letter patterns and words. This agenda is what researchers call the “visual word form area,” a region that becomes known for rapid word recognition.
Undamaged brain areas can take over functions from injured regions by strengthening alternate pathways and can trust more weight on reading pathways that weren’t injured and by creating new connections.
After doing this research, I’m motivated to finish, after attempting three times, David Foster Wallace’s tome, Infinite Jest. Even for brain-injured me, there is not one good reason I can’t. I have all the time in the world. The story starts:
“I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair. This is a cold room in University Administration, wood-walled, Remington hung, doubled-windowed against the November heat….”
Compelling, yes? Another 1,079 pages to go.
Joyce, this was a tough article for me to comprehend and understand, I have memories of understanding it before, I’ll read it aloud and re-read a few times and see if that helps. My recent fall and hemorrhage may have created more problems than they’ve yet said, I’m certainly feeling them. Thanks for this, as it gives me evidence that they aren’t getting all data and consequences of that triple twist fall. I goes I thought I could do ice skating twirls. I’ll keep this to study more and build from that. Thanks to you and Sara for all that you do to help!! KS
Very good information! I love to read and had a horrible time after my stroke remembering what I read even a paragraph later. I just kept after it and now, no problem.
I would have gladly read a lot of books post stroke but holding open books one-handed and turning pages was a complete disaster. Never found a solution and wasn’t going down the Kindle route. The left arm/hand was no use at all; in fact the spasticity made it worse since I had to constantly use my right hand to postion the left fingers.
I had the same problem, If you have a tablet, search for and then press the Kindle app, and that transforms the tablet into a “Kindle”! That’s what I do. Sliding to get a new page is easy rather than turning.