Does smell or hearing also read with sight?
When reading, the brain interconnects sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch...
As? And how does he know?
Anyone who reads and has felt their senses stimulated by what they are reading knows in a mysterious way; but it has a rational and evolutionary explanation.
Damásio explained here that the brain is a plastic network that connects all its areas.
In my essay I investigate the origins of neuroscientific research and how it began with the study of the distinction of the brain's specialization in areas, such as Broca's for language.
After a stroke, do you say, does exercising your senses recover that of reading?
That interconnection of the senses that I refer to when detailing that case from the 19th century is the result of our evolution, from amoeba to being mammals: all the senses were the same before our brain evolved specializing them.
Can a kiss improve your hearing?
Because the senses are interconnected. I believe in the power of the hands, the face, the touch, the lips, the kisses and the bonds between all of them... Which reinforces reading.
Are synesthesias the expression of our ancestral brain?
The combinatorial capacity of the prefrontal areas allows us to interconnect senses. Therefore, if when you say something to someone, they hold your hand, it will give you an intensity that you will not achieve with words alone: try it.
By exercising one sense do I improve them all?
Yes, because they are interconnected from their original origin. And by reading, we exercise that interconnectivity.
The best writers appeal to all the senses in their texts, which smell or sound...
It is the essence of poetry. And perhaps the best image of the evolution of reasoning and the senses is that of 2001: A Space Odyssey when the monkey throws a femur into the air and transforms into a spaceship...
That scene synthesizes a million years of evolution of the human experience.
Well, that bone is a book and it is writing and reading, which give us immense power and infinite possibilities. They are a gigantic growing prosthesis of memory, which interconnects the senses when used.
Will artificial intelligence complete it?
Mathematicians are used to creating algorithms to transform other algorithms and this is what generative artificial intelligence does, which accelerates interconnection in networks like reading in the brain.
Aren't you afraid of accusations of intrusion from neuroscientists and computer scientists?
We should all interconnect more and thus increase our knowledge, as demonstrated by our evolution.
What does a stroke from the last century teach us?
For me, telling it has been an intellectual adventure, because what is a diagnosis if not a narrative? What doctors do is give meaning over time to each ailment and that narrative articulates and prioritizes symptoms, causes and effects until the cure...
...Or death.
...In contrast to which we use another narrative...
...Now about religions and transcendence.
But, deep down, artificial intelligence and its chats do nothing but automatically construct these narratives in the same way that algorithms are calculative narratives and are now articulated in a program that learns to create speeches. Therefore, children with reading comprehension problems...
Serious handicap.
...They suffer only from perception problems and to overcome them they must exercise their senses, all the interconnected senses.
Why have some children lost that ability to perceive?
The excess of information in circulation that already reaches them filtered on the networks does not help them and, therefore, it prevents them from the effort and benefit of moving from the letter to the meaning – of internalizing the text – and their biology no longer does so through through the thalamus so that it passes into consciousness.
Too much mobile and not enough books?
Furthermore, during adolescence certain brain structures are not fully constructed and the superficial reading to which they become accustomed requires little effort and is not enough to understand demanding texts. More books and less networks: yes.
Easy, fast, superficial and ephemeral.
Reading requires immediate ability to analyze the construction to understand the statements. If you acquire it, you are capable of understanding texts on any subject.
First subject among all: reading?
And not only for school: reading exercises the brain muscle that is most difficult to improve, but also the most useful: that of attention.
Is concentrating beginning to understand?
It is the hidden value of reading: it promotes concentration and prevents brain degeneration. Reading is keeping your brain in shape: the best investment in health.
