If you keep on telling your friends, like neuroscientist Manuel Carrieras would have said, "Now isn't that the ideal opportunity for research into our brain?", then you will enjoy this!
After decades spent fighting, members of the guerrilla forces have begun re-integrating into mainstream Colombian society, introducing a sizeable population of illiterate adults who have no formal education. Upon putting down their weapons and returning to society, some had the opportunity to learn to read for the first time in their early twenties, providing the perfect natural situation for experiments investigating structural brain differences associated with the acquisition of literacy in the absence of other types of schooling or maturational development.
A neuroscientist by the name of Manuel Carrieras and his colleagues jumped at the opportunity and, according to Mind Hacks, they are glad they did!
"it is almost impossible to separate out which are the brain changes due specifically to acquiring literacy and which are just part of the massive changes that constantly take place as children develop..." But after the study we now know that even if literacy develops only during the adult years, the brain scans of the previous illiterates grow. Just as it does when we're babies.
After decades spent fighting, members of the guerrilla forces have begun re-integrating into mainstream Colombian society, introducing a sizeable population of illiterate adults who have no formal education. Upon putting down their weapons and returning to society, some had the opportunity to learn to read for the first time in their early twenties, providing the perfect natural situation for experiments investigating structural brain differences associated with the acquisition of literacy in the absence of other types of schooling or maturational development.
A neuroscientist by the name of Manuel Carrieras and his colleagues jumped at the opportunity and, according to Mind Hacks, they are glad they did!
"it is almost impossible to separate out which are the brain changes due specifically to acquiring literacy and which are just part of the massive changes that constantly take place as children develop..." But after the study we now know that even if literacy develops only during the adult years, the brain scans of the previous illiterates grow. Just as it does when we're babies.
