X-Message-Number: 11456 Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 18:40:04 -0500 From: Jan Coetzee <> Subject: Right brain also reads The case of a 73-year-old stroke patient suggests that, contrary to conventional theory, the nondominant side of the brain might play an important role in reading, according to a report in the March issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. Neurologists have long believed that processes involved in reading occur solely within the left hemisphere of the brain, which is dominant in right-handed individuals. However, in right-handed individuals, the right brain may help process "different spatial patterns used while reading," conclude Drs. R.R. Leker and I. Biran of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel. The Israeli team report the case of an elderly right-handed professor, fluent in both Hebrew and English, who was admitted to the hospital after suffering a hemorrhage in the right side of his brain. Upon recovery, the man "complained of being unable to read simple words or paragraphs from a daily newspaper in Hebrew," the authors explain, "whereas he noted no such difficulty while reading in English." Hebrew and English are each read horizontally, but in opposite directions (Hebrew right-to-left, English left-to-right). According to Leker and Biran, the man complained of "a fluttering motion" in his field of vision, affecting "the rightmost letters of every word... when trying to read in Hebrew." Linguists believe that the first few letters of any word hold the 'key' to its meaning. The authors speculate that "the fluttering in the right (field of vision) may have been responsible for (the patient's) inability to read the all-important first letters string and to comprehend Hebrew words." Such a visual deficit would have little impact on left-to-right English comprehension, however. The man's reading ability eventually improved to near-normal, although the researchers note that "18 months after the (episode) he still had minor deficits when reading Hebrew." The researchers theorize that the right hemisphere may help us visually place words and sentences in a right-to-left spatial frame. Damage to these spatial centers in the right brain might therefore trigger reading deficits in specific languages, they explain. The case of the bilingual professor suggests "that the right hemisphere does play a part in reading ability and that this part may have special relevance to different spatial patterns used while reading," the Israeli team writes. "Different neuronal networks responsible for the direction of reading may come into play. We suggest... that lesions of these systems can cause directional dyslexia," they conclude. SOURCE: Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 1999;66:517-519. _______________________________________________________________ J.C. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11456