Neuroscience in reading and reading difficulties

Reading is a complex and multifaceted skill, which has to be acquired through years of extensive and explicit teaching and practice. Visual word reading/recognition starts with the analysis of visual features of a word and then maps the orthographic and graphic units, referring to written letters, strings of letters, or other graphemes, onto phonological units such as phonemes or syllables; meaning is, thus, accessed. The aforementioned event-related potential research has contributed to our knowledge of the temporal course of reading. Dyslexia involves difficulties in reading and spelling despite normal schooling, adequate intelligence, and equal social economic opportunities, as well as a lack of sensory acuity deficits, neurological and psychiatric diseases. As mentioned previously, reading is a complex cognitive skill, entailing several levels of brain organization, which are difficult to differentiate with traditional psychological measures. A few neuroscience studies have contributed to our understanding of how social factors such as socio-economic status influence the brain basis of reading and reading difficulties. Copyright © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Michael S. C. Thomas, Denis Mareschal and Iroise Dumontheil; individual chapters, the contributors.