The culturally co-opted brain: how literacy affects the human mind

Inside the Letterbox: How Literacy Transforms the Human Brain

Few issues are as important to the future of humanity as acquiring literacy. Brain-scanning technology and cognitive tests on a variety of subjects by one of the world's foremost cognitive neuroscientists has led to a better understanding of how a region of the brain responds to visual stimuli. The results could profoundly affect learning and help individuals with reading disabilities.

How Literacy Acquisition Affects the Illiterate Mind - A Critical Examination of Theories and Evidence

At present, more than one-fifth of humanity is unable to read and write. We critically examine experimental evidence and theories of how (il)literacy affects the human mind. In our discussion, we show that literacy has significant cognitive consequences that go beyond the processing of written words and sentences. Thus, cultural inventions such as reading shape general cognitive processing in n...

How the Nonextensivity Parameter Affects Energy Fluctuations

In this article, the effect of the nonextensivity parameter on the energy fluctuations of nonextensive systems is studied in two different versions of the Tsallis statistical mechanics. Once a general expression has been reported for the energy fluctuations in the second version (Tsallis work in 1988), the energy fluctuations of an ideal gas and a harmonic oscillator are studied in the second a...

How Personality Affects Literacy Development

How the brain creates the mind.

A s the millennium draws to a close, it is apparent that one question towers above all others in the life sciences: How does the set of processes we call mind emerge from the activity of the organ we call brain? The question is hardly new. It has been formulated in one way or another for centuries. Once it became possible to pose the question and not be burned at the stake, it has been asked op...