We tend to associate reading with sight- but the brain doesn’t always follow that logic.
I recently read a study that explored what happens in the brain when sighted adults learn Braille- and it left me rethinking some long-held assumptions about how we read, process language & build literacy.
What did the study find?
In a longitudinal fMRI study by Siuda-Krzywicka et al. (2016), sighted adults were trained to read Braille by touch over a 9-month period. Brain scans were taken at different stages of learning. The results were compelling:
- Early Braille reading activated the somatosensory cortex & motor areas- as expected, since learners were decoding words through touch.
- As participants became more fluent, activation spread to areas typically involved in visual print reading- especially the visual word form area (VWFA).
- The VWFA, despite its name, isn’t exclusively visual- it appears to specialise in recognising patterns associated with written language, regardless of input mode (sight or touch).
- Interestingly, VWFA activation occurred more slowly during tactile reading than in visual reading, possibly due to the more sequential, linear nature of touch-based decoding.
What else do we know?
Research in this area reveals a remarkably adaptable brain:
- Cross-modal plasticity allows one sensory system (e.g., touch) to recruit neural real estate normally devoted to another (e.g., sight), especially when input is structured & linguistic.
- Studies on blind Braille readers (e.g., Sadato et al., 1996) show that the visual cortex is repurposed for language processing, even in those with no visual experience.
- Adult learners show neuroplastic changes too—reminding us that literacy learning isn’t biologically age-limited.
- A 2023 position paper argues that constantly comparing Braille to print can reinforce ableist assumptions. It calls for “decentring sighted norms” & treating Braille as a writing system in its own right, with its own internal structure & cultural value.
- Up to 40% of the human cerebral cortex is involved in visual processing. That’s a huge chunk of neural territory dedicated to sight- far more than for touch or hearing. This makes it all the more remarkable that the brain can repurpose parts of the visual system, like the visual word form area, for tactile reading in Braille. It shows us that literacy isn’t tied to one sense- it’s tied to the brain’s drive to decode & make meaning, whatever the input.
Teacher Takeaways?
- Adults can build new reading networks
- The study shows that even sighted adults can recruit new brain areas through consistent Braille training.
- This gives hope for adult literacy, dyslexia interventions & late L2 readers—reading skills can be built or rebuilt.
- Redefine what “reading” means
- Reading isn’t just visual decoding—it’s language interpretation via a symbolic system.
- Recognising this broadens how we accommodate & include learners who don’t process text conventionally.
Neuroscience doesn’t always give us classroom-ready tools- but it does give us interesting insights. If the brain can route touch through the same circuits as vision to make sense of written language, it shows us just how powerful & adaptable our drive for language learning can be.
Have you ever used tactile or multisensory tasks to support reading in your classroom?
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