Horizons of reading comprehension

In neuroscience, we have two approaches to study: bottom-up and top-down. We can deal with (in order) genetics, molecules, neurons (synapses and electrophysiology), as well as the characteristics of neural networks... and thus, with a bottom-up approach, we study what interests us. From the other direction, we go through psychology, neuro systems, senses, anatomy, functional connectivity... so, top-down.

In the text Word Boxer >> we went from the eye through the river-box to the neural networks from the bottom-up, which is what most speed reading courses focus on. On gif 1 from the text River perception (it doesn't even matter) you can see that after the stimulation and the described activation, the wave goes back. It seems that understanding needs an additional mechanism from above that waits for what comes from below and redirects it where it needs to go. It can be seen as an up-down (or back-and-forth) process.

This opens the door to ideas: how does the brain understand text?

Left-right

The book "Speed Reading with your Right Brain" is interesting with its "improve understanding and speed will increase by itself."

  But "reading with the right hemisphere"? Until now, we have been reading with the left, which is more like "rational, logical, linguistic...", while our right hemisphere is asleep; which is "for visualization, colors, daydreaming, imagining..." (figure 1). He sleeps the most when the text is boring and dry. Accordingly, he divided understanding into visualization and concept-in-but-for-tion.

On the right track, but I don't know why it's detouring so much :)

Nicely designed concept as it is easy for people to understand and remember. It really sticks, like "we only use 10% of our brain capacity".

Figure 1. Left logical, right magical. A concept arising after cutting the corpus collosum in patients with epilepsy; the question is whether observations on healthy patients can be used. Do we benefit more by looking at what is behind or in front, down or up, on which snarl?, etc.

Let's ask ourselves: what are we actually visualizing? Well, mostly what we combine from visual memory with the effect of concreteness. The largest groups would be: objects, living beings (in the case of humans and animals parts of the body and face), houses, places. If we look at the brain as a region-function, then we can easily see that we don't have to go far to access visualization.

The concept of reading with the right hemisphere is a bit unnecessary when the brain is turned upside down and viewed from below (figure 2). We see that there is no need to detour to the right and thus waste energy and time.

Figure 2. Do you know where you're going? If we really follow the desire to go to the right hemisphere, from the lower side of the brain we see how long it actually is (from the yellow field, we follow the red and then the purple arrow). Functionally, everything that is most often visualized and conceptualized has a plot on the left side.

Metaphorically speaking, it would be like if we went shopping from Niš to Belgrade, returned and saw that there is something similar in Niš as well.

We are not naive and we are not going to joke, but we are connecting that the author was on a better path than other courses. We see in figure 2 that the brain can also go "shopping around Niš".

We understand that the semantic network is an integral part of the so-called the ventral pathway, which in layman's terms answers the question "what?" is something, recognizes objects and connects contexts.

Nevertheless, we see that the author cleverly wanted to jump from the river box directly into the semantic one, through visualization and conceptualization. And as we said, the phonetic network does not get a lot of resources.

And the author came up with all that one day while lying in the sun...  

I have been using this method for learning for a while and have had good results. Here, however, I had another problem: I still focused on the voice and I visualized from phonetics. Although I did not go around to the "right hemisphere", I still spent a lot of energy and time on visualization. So close, yet so far. Although it is a good method for learning, it is still demanding, it deviates from the path, it requires (us) resources, and thus and changes one aspect of understanding.
This unintentionally wrong idea brings us closer to understanding understanding.

The subconscious offers, the conscious chooses

From research with the river box we know that:

• we must be aware of the displayed word. If the word box is activated subconsciously by a rapidly displayed word (under 0.01s), brain engagement is negligible. Only when we are aware of the word (display duration at least 0.05s), activation is sufficient to read.
• the unconscious prepares all the meanings for the displayed word, from which the conscious chooses the appropriate one in accordance with the (con)text
• consciousness can influence the subconscious (top-down), first by preparing it. But it can also bother her (slips)

Therefore, consciousness requires from the subconscious all the elements necessary for understanding. The subconscious engages all the associated regions from which the conscious constructs the final understanding. The mentioned "reading with the right hemisphere", according to this, forces the consciousness to take over a lot of the work of the subconscious. This is how resources are wasted and understanding is limited, because how will consciousness know what the subconscious knows.

What we actually want to talk about is semantic memory and abstract knowledge. I talked about them in Semantic Memory >> and Abstract Knowledge >>. Also, all this requires interest, or simply put, control of attention. For me, when my consciousness is somewhere in the clouds, I don't understand anything and the only thing I do is say the text. Therefore, it is a good idea to match the requirements (from above) and skills (from below) for reading comprehension.

But let's not rush.

But please understand ME.

It makes sense to me that most who are interested in speed reading courses have comprehension problems (and the kids were forced by their parents xax). Comprehension of the text is of course individual and depends on all factors, such as attention, interest, prior knowledge, the text (or rather the writer), etc.

We said that the brain doesn't have to spend a lot to understand, and that's why fast reading succeeds, and with us, easy reading 😁. I mean, the whole work of that lower (and upper) flow comes down to understanding (incoming information) - everything is already there, it just needs to be connected. And I mean everything related to what we read.

Here are some examples:

• When I take the word 'banana', the fruit 🍌 it represents has many properties (plant, species, taste, smell, color, size, ripeness) and context (diet, trade,... rudeness...). When we read this word, if we try to e.g. we visualize, then we bet we read about the context where we only need visual features. If we list all the yellow fruits, do we need to see each one? I just want to point out that the effort is wasted.
• If I read about e.g. soccer, myself who played it a lot as a kid, I will activate some of the networks (in PMA, PreMotorArea) that I used while playing. That won't happen if I were to read about a sport I only watched. For example. the one when they're skating, where one pushes that block of ice, and the other rubs it with brushes so that it hits 🤔...something.
• If we flashed the word "snake" subconsciously, the amygdala (the core of emotional reactions) would also be activated due to the innate fear of snakes.
• Here is a somewhat paradoxical example: when printed letters are read, the writing networks are also activated.

All these examples also indicate the presence of mirror neurons in the brain, which it uses in general to understand its environment by connecting its experiences.

It's the same with reading. It already has everything, it just needs to connect.

Although a boring answer, but we should not bother him and confuse him and we will be able to train him effectively. And now how to train him? Not yet...

If I don't have concentration, I can use some of these moments to immerse myself in reading: I start visualizing, conceptualizing, questioning what I know, thinking that this text is something more exciting lol... and that's how I redirect my attention. But here we are talking about attention, not understanding.

Complexity and specialization

Most understanding is formed subconsciously. So working on sub/vocalization, visualization, conceptualization... is like working on symptoms. However, it does not mean that they cannot serve as an indication for a better understanding. For me, when I read about a process, I still need visualization, spatial, kinetic and inherent, in order to understand better. Every time I come across a location in the brain in the text, I have to stop and use GPS to get to that part: left [hemisphere] ventral [down] occipitotemporal [occiput then temple] lobe.

If we were to look a little wider and insert some additional level, dimension or aspect of understanding, we would get even more territory where the subconscious can stop during reading - they call it metacognition. This is something like a word association exercise - I take one word and connect it with words that come to mind (or brainstorming).

In this case, I would already add an understanding of the text of specific areas. It's like comparing dark fiction, the legal code, and neuroscience literature. In the first case, there are probably a lot of epithets, attributes, prepositions, nouns that can be nicely visualized and make a nice mental movie out of it. And since our brain loves movies and stories in general, it will be much easier for it to read this literature; even a dark one. He doesn't need any prior knowledge for that. Reading laws is like reading, I guess, sentence-by-sentence. Neuroscientific reading is full of processes, locations, concepts,... which requires a little more flexibility and familiarity.

Overall, perhaps the best top-down approach to improving text comprehension is what happens before reading: prior knowledge, thinking, preparation... and ultimately, if something is read more than once, more metacognition is activated. Good food for thought.

Also, when we read the text for the second time, the front parts of the semantic network are activated, which means that abstract knowledge is realized and the entire understanding crystallizes.

I therefore recommend that the next reading be: Semantic memory >> then Abstract knowledge >>

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