 Hi, my name is Tracy Takahama-Spinoza and this is a video about the reading brain, specifically looking at biliteracy skills. I'm a professor at Harvard University's Extension School. I teach a class called the Neuroscience of Learning. It's an introduction to mind, brain health, and education. And I have also got a claim to fame that I've raised three multilingual children. And so it's not just the theory, it's really the practice of how all of this works. One of the interesting insights that most teachers do not get exposure to has to do with the neural mechanism. So we're going to be looking at how the brain learns languages in general, why reading is a special trait, and then look at the different neural networks for biliteracy skills in particular. I'm going to do all of this from a mind, brain, health, and education perspective. So trying to understand the contributions from psychology as well as from neuroscience studies about the brain as well as educational practice. So basically, the first and main question we have is where are languages in the brain? And there's been a lot of wonderful research, specifically, I would say that Stanislaus Sehan is one of the foremost researchers in this area as far as cognitive neuroscience is concerned. He wrote a wonderful book, Reading in the Brain. He's French, and his books are available on French, English, and Spanish online if you're interested. Marian Wolf is also an exceptional writer in this area, researching the brain and specifically how it reads. And she's also exploring context of technology and its impact on the reading brain. We also maintain in the course at Harvard a bundle, which is a curated collection of bibliographic references to the most recent research on bilingualism and multilingualism which you're welcome to have a look at. So what's the sampling of this information? Dehan and his colleagues initially suspected that within the occipital cortex of the brain and the back part, it was very interesting that there seemed to be a high level of processing, not just for visual imaging, but when letters were processed differently from other types of visual symbols. And that opened up this idea that there may be something called a letter box area in the brain or something that is mainly primed to understand those symbolic representations for linguistic symbols. And that was kind of new, evolutionarily wise in terms of the brain. So other research looked into how the brain learns a word, so not just the letters that might be involved or the symbol system, but how are words actually formed? And it's a really complex process. But more complicated is, you know, once you know the word, how can you create a sentence and how does the brain actually decipher how that sentence works? And so looking for the neural correlates of all of these different things made us understand that reading, writing, language in the brain is not just in one place, but there's very complex networks that are involved. For example, in semantic retrieval, understanding the meaning of a word, for example, highly complicated process in the brain. So these complex neural networks, not just the place in the brain, were where we're thinking about language these days. And this is leading us to new hypothesis about how the bilingual brain might read, for example. So other studies pointed out that abstract symbols, for example, an exclamation point or a question mark or quotation marks are processed in a different area of the brain than that letter box. So it's telling us that symbolic understanding for language is also different from the things that form words and the things that form other types of communication within written language. So looking at this global idea of language processing, we begin to get a better and more complex idea of what's involved in the reading brain. We also know that if a person is reading passive words out loud actively, or if they actively read passive words, their brains are doing different things. So we know that emotions also change the neural networks in the way that they are processing language as well. Additionally, there's a lot of research going on now related to the balance of cognition and affect. So does your emotional state influence what you're able to learn? And we know that at a level not of networks, but rather of neurotransmitters, so chemicals, we know that anxiety creates certain types of neurotransmitters, chemicals in the brain. And those inhibit new learning. They inhibit other neurotransmitters that are needed to make synaptic connections. And so we know that highly negative emotional states are definitely bad for learning, but any teacher could have told you that. But now we have this kind of neuroscientific evidence. So in the course of looking for how does the brain learn language, we find distinct neural networks for understanding how spelling works. How should I spell this word? Those neural networks are different from what does the word mean, right? Humor is a different neural network from processing first and second languages, prosody or the intonation that we use. Gesture using our hands to actually help us with the rhythm of a language. All of those are different neural networks in the brain. So to top it off, we also know that a brain that is beginning to learn language or beginning to learn to read, for example, looks very different from an experienced or expert brain. We know that you use less of your brain the more expert you get. So as a novice brain, you've really got neural circuits all over the place because they're not refined. But once you get better at things, you use less energy to actually achieve that language exchange or reading or writing. So one of the first conclusions we can say then is that understanding these very important and intricate neural networks and their relation to each other makes us understand that there is a clear hierarchy of information. If we introduce basic core concepts clearly at first, for example, the letters that are needed to form words, then the words that become sentences and the sentences that become paragraphs. If we understand those very core elements first before moving on to the other things, we have a better chance of success. So a hierarchy of skills is what's coming out of this neural network. This is based on the concept then of constructivism, right? We know that people construct their knowledge of the world. Well, now we talk about neuroconstructivism. How are those neural networks in place so that you can construct that higher order understanding of reading and writing? Now, all of this is basically conjecture because we're piecing together puzzles of parts of information. Some people are studying humor, interpretation in the brain. Other people are studying first versus second languages in the brain. Other people are studying intonation and emotion in the brain. Almost nobody, except for, for example, Stanislaw Sehani and Mary Ann Woof, few people are looking at the big picture of how does all of that fit together to tell us how the brain is really processing all of language and becomes literate or biliterate. So one way to look at this that's helpful and usable knowledge for teachers is to break this down into a schematic understanding. How is it that we understand this? Well, there are some things that we see in a classroom, right? The child can sound out a word based on phonemic understanding, right? C-A-T-Cat, okay? So they begin to sound out words, right? But these are multiple. That just sounding out that word is multiple pathways. It's understanding what each of those letters corresponds to that phonem and how put together they sound out a word. But that word also has a meaning that's the cat, right? And so there's all of these different pathways that are related to that in the brain. And so being able to read is really broken down into multiple neural pathways. So when we talk about language skills in the brain, they're just not in one space, one part of the brain, but we know that there's this complex set of neural networks that are being, that are involved in this process. So if we switch now from general reading and understanding the brain and how somebody might learn their first language, I want to turn to bilingual benefits. And most of you are very clear that there's great benefits to being a successful bilingual. You have a higher level of extraction at earlier ages. You're able to use language rules earlier if you're brought up bilingual from birth. You can inhibit. Inhibitory control is higher in bilinguals and in monolinguals. And literally you're using a bit more of your brain than you are if you're just a monolingual, right? And there's no disadvantages. Bilingualism is a wonderful and very positive thing all around. There's really no disadvantages so long as it's done right. And in fact, there are some really key benefits, especially to the poorer populations. We know that early extensive bilingual exposure in the earlier years has a great benefit overall for learners in terms of executive function control and overall academic achievements. So there's some great benefits to teaching a second, third or fourth language in the early years as well. So when we began to see this maybe 10, 20 years ago, we started to have this very poor neuroimaging that was just giving us little splotches and blobs of things. But it was making us understand that these neural networks were very different for different types of sub skills of language. And when we started to compare monolinguals and bilingual children, we're realizing there's actually additional elements, additional parts of the brain that are being used in different types of processing. And these things began to be known as neural signatures. There's something that's typical about bilingual brains that looks different from a monolingual brain. So a trained eye could look and see certain types of reinforcement. We know that there is more white matter. There's more reinforcement, more myelin sheath in certain areas of the brain that have been rehearsed more. And you see that in bilingual brains more than in monolingual brains. And perhaps the leading researcher in this field is Laura Ann Petito, whose work has just been phenomenal in looking at bilingual brains and how they differ from monolingual brains. Bialstock, Ellen Bialstock is another wonderful researcher in this field that points out the cognitive benefits of early bilingualism and how this has benefits in other subject areas, not just in language itself, but because of enhanced executive functions, there's better academic achievement overall. So there's also comparisons of bilinguals over their lifespan and the increases in white matter tract, which means that there's less of a deterioration within the synaptic structure connecting neurons in the brain, which is another benefit. So bilingualism across the lifespan has seen to be a protective factor for neurocognitive disease. And again, it's easy for people who are studying this field to see a big distinction between what a monolingual brain and a bilingual brain might look like because of those neural tracts. So semantic memory retrieval and the way that motor areas are defined in the brain are also slightly different in monolinguals and bilinguals. And longitudinal studies watching or tracking bilinguals over the course of their lifestans show that they do have slightly different neural pathways than a monolingual would have. Many of these point to the subset of executive functions of either working memory, inhibitory control, or cognitive flexibility, which has seemed to be enhanced through bilingualism, as well as a benefit of being able to task switch easier if you are bilingual. Furthermore, this research showed this is a very iterative process. So a bilingual's use of language has to be active in order for you to have all of these great benefits. So it's really this iterative interaction with your world and the growing development of those skill sets over time that serves as those protective factors. And this includes in some studies and some research Alzheimer's disease, for example. Once we saw all these great benefits then, there was some nitpicking then. Now what does this mean for different types of bilinguals? People brought up bilingual from birth. How is that different from early bilinguals or from people who learn their languages as adults? What would the differences in neural connectivity be? And that's where the research sits today is those comparisons of those different types of bilingual. The general research trend seems to be showing that obviously the earlier the better. Your brain adapts to what it does most. So the earlier you have additional languages in your life, the better it is for your brain. And part of this recommendation of the earlier the better comes from the idea that certain neural structures are changed by those early experiences in the brain and that early rehearsal lays pathways for future things. So what you know influences what you can know. The more you know now, the more you can know in the future due to those neural structures and their processing in the early ages, which sets a pathway for what will happen in the future. So studies again now are showing that this core functioning is really changed by early immersion in foreign languages. Now, all of this has to do with spoken language. So if we switch gears now and look at the written word, it's a totally different ball game. It's really, really fascinating to see how writing in a foreign language is one of the most complicated things you can ask your brain to do because so many neural pathways are functioning at the same time. Semantic retrieval, things about writing, things motor cortex things, everything is happening at the same time. And this is not surprising if you look at the older research looking at psychology and educational work, for example, by Cummings and Gibbons and Corson. These fellows made it clear that oral skills are very different and much easier to acquire than literacy skills. Learning to read and write takes about five to seven years to get on par with a native speaker, whereas you can learn to speak between one and two years depending on the methodology. If it's full immersion, it's much faster. If it's within a school context, it can be a little bit longer. But learning to speak like a native is much, much easier than learning to read or write. And many studies began to really bring this to light starting in the early 2010s, 2012. And going back to Stanis Lastihan's book, he looked at the reading brain without adding on this complexity of biliteracy. But when I inquired him about this, he said, actually, we're seeing that if you were brought up early as an early bilingual, there's really almost no difference between a monolingual and a multilingual brain. So that's so interesting, isn't it? The earlier you have language, the more your brain looks like it's just accepting all of your languages as a first language. So if we break this down, what we know about the different studies in early biliteracy skill and in language skills in general and learning how to read and write, we go back to this schematic representation. We have language, which is what we talk about in school, right? Some of the subdomains could be reading, writing, speaking, and listening to that language. And this is the things that we try to enhance and teach. But you have to now go down to this neural pathway to understand the different networks that are involved because different types of activities enhance different networks in the brain. So the main idea is to understand all of these different networks to be able to enhance them with the appropriate activities in class, okay? So that's the big idea here. If we take neuroconstructivism, we try to understand all of these different pieces have to be ready. And this is one of the findings that we had when we did our initial research and compared it in schools. We saw that if we know there are at least 16 neural networks that are related to being able to read. And if all 16 aren't working, the kid isn't reading. Even if he has one of those just weak, he's not gonna read. And any of you who've taught a child to read knows this. You can practice, practice, practice. And then one day, all of a sudden, the kid reads. And it's not because in that moment he learned to read, it's because all of those neural pathways were ready for him to read. So we need to have all of that preparation ready before we're able to do that. Of these 16 neural pathways, we know that things that have to do with physiological perception of the world influence your ability to read as do social-emotional impacts and the cultural context and just the cultural artifacts like the written language, what kind of symbols are you using? Those things influence your reading as well. As do general cognitive abilities of memory, attention, and executive functions, as well as domain-specific functions that have to do with symbols, orders, patterns, categories, and relationships. And so we know that attentional networks are different from visual networks being able to see, which are different from understanding symbol systems in the brain. And that's different from working memory and having this phonological loop so you're trying to remember cat, cat, cat, just remembering that long enough to be able to get the semantic memory there is different. Changing those phonemes, that b, a, g, into an idea of bag, that's a very different neural network from semantic retrieval. What does that word mean, okay? Which is distinct from semantic understanding, which is different from syntactic understanding, understanding the order of the words. They play a different role depending on the placement within the sentence, right? We also know that saying something like, I'm pregnant, depending on your intonation, means totally different things, and that's managed by a different neural network in your brain. If you say I'm pregnant or I'm pregnant, it's totally different, but it comes from similar neural pathways in the brain for context and intonation. So if you don't have prosody going for you, you'll come off flat and you really don't understand what you're saying, right? Or what the person was trying to convey. So we know that intonation is a distinct neural pathway in the brain from all those other things we mentioned. Pulling together coherent sentence, all of those different words and pieces in the right order is a distinct neural pathway, which is even different from pulling together this macro vision of a whole paragraph or a book in an essay, those are distinct neural pathways. Working memory has multiple sub elements to it that are very important, as well as all of these social emotional factors, right? The relationship that the child has with the reading itself, with the peers in the class, with the teacher, how does that impact his social status with the group? Does it make him look like a nerd and negative or is it something positive? All of these things influence learning outcomes. And I think any teacher would tell you, well, I know that, I know that the kid doesn't, some kids don't have good vocabulary, other kids don't have a good understanding of phonemic awareness, other kids are just shy. So teachers know this, but the very interesting thing is that we now have this information from neuroscience that gives us the tools to say, okay, but what exercises, what activities can I do to enhance these different neural networks to ensure that children read well, okay? So if we go back and look at these various reading circuits in the brain and understand how complex reading is, it's very different to listen and then to read. And reading versus writing is even more complex, right? So we know that language is not one thing in the brain. Language is multiple sub elements in the brain. So in reading languages, you'll see these distinct neural networks. You'll also see that if a kid has been exposed to high frequency words or low frequency words, you'll see that these are distinct neural pathways as well. As is this idea that we can learn a whole lot, for example, from people who are dyslexic. We can learn when things aren't going so well. We understand how that changes the neural pathways in the brain as well. So all of this is just to say that there are very different distinct neural pathways in the brain. There's at least these 16 that we've pointed out that will be important in understanding if you are trying to design or choose activities that would enhance each of those neural pathways. You can't read and write unless all of those are working well. We know that spelling is a distinct neural pathway from the actual exercise of writing that's spelled out words. So all of those things have to combine in order to be able to be an efficient reader, especially in distinct or different languages. Another very interesting fact won't influence the way you teach, but a very interesting fact is that emotionally charged words are actually processed differently in the brain than words for pronouns, for example, or for cat, dog versus something like excited and overwhelmed. So those processing of words is also different based on the emotional charge they have. So in summary, if we look at this from maybe what Indefry and Goudal and Berg's work was, they basically said after trying to look at all of this literature about 15 years ago, they said, you know what? It's easier to ask what parts of the brain are not involved in language than what parts of the brain are involved. Because now if we understand these neural networks in this complex way, we realize that there are many, many areas of the brain that are being used to process language, most specifically for reading and writing. And so if we look back now at these neural networks for reading and writing, these 16 neural pathways, you'll find that those break out into sub areas and there's over a hundred distinct pathways that can be stimulated. So part of this is understanding how to make this usable knowledge by breaking down those neural pathways, understanding the areas of the brain that are being stimulated by that, but understanding these sub elements. When we talk about hearing, that has to do with pitch, tempo, tone, prosody, loudness, whether or not the sound is coming from the left of you, the right of you, or whether or not these are human spoken words or if they're other types of sounds, all of those are different neural networks and teachers need to appreciate those sub elements. Similarly, the things that are used for short-term memory, working memory, long-term memory, those are all very different neural pathways and long-term memory breaks out into multiple sub elements. So biographical memory, semantic memory, long-term fact retrieval, those are all very different. So it's important to appreciate the complexity of the brain, not to be overwhelmed by it, but to understand that this will allow us to be much more precise when we have interaction with our students and choose a much more appropriate type of activities. This is my own personal drawing, trying to understand all of the studies I was reading, trying to track those neural pathways. And again, like in Jeffrey and Gullenberg, I found that it was basically covering most of the brain. It was very hard not to find a part of the brain that was not involved in language processing. So all of these are sub elements, and you're welcome to review this at your leisure to understand all of these different neural pathways related to the distinct neural networks that we mentioned. But this is just the main idea here as a takeaway is to understand the complexity of learning to read and write is much more than just saying, how can we teach a child to read? It's gotta be easy. We're just gonna repeat the same activity. That same activity you might do will only enhance a handful of those neural networks that are necessary. So unless we vary the activities, we will not be able to have successful language intervention. So the main benefit here is precision. It makes teachers more like researcher practitioners. It's based on scientific evidence that we know that these neural pathways exist and we know that they correlate to those different activities. It respects a hierarchy of complexity that is necessary to talk about this neuroconstructivist design for learning. And it basically is how the brain is actually looking for information itself. It knows it can't construct on top of a weak foundation. So it waits to have those lower level or base concepts and reinforced before it moves on. This appears to be university applicable independent of the language. We've used this and looked at this in different language contexts and it does seem to be applicable all around the world. And it helps us better identify those specific gaps that a kid might have on their path to learning, reading, and writing. So the final slide here talks about the difference between general literacy and biliteracy in the brain. And there's a lot going on, but most of the work, as we mentioned before, is only being done in one of these multiple neural pathways. For example, this one is neural mechanisms, a verb in sentence production. It's basically looking at just how verbs play into sentence production, right? Others are looking at the influence or what we can learn from dyslexic brains when we talk about reading and writing in the biliterate brain, right? So each of these is basically looking at a sub-element of this, as I mentioned before, because we now know that breaking down reading and writing in the brain is really much more complex than we had originally thought. And there's multiple pathways that have to be studied and that's what's going on in the research today. So I look forward to your questions. If you can do nothing else, please write down if there were three things you didn't know from before, two things that are interesting to you that you would like to continue researching and that you'll bring as a question to our synchronous meeting, and maybe one thing that you would change about your practice as a language teacher now that you know this information about biliteracy skills. Thank you very much. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to write. Take care.