The Reading Brain

Maryanne Wolf is the author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century, Dyslexia, Fluency, and the Brain as well as over 160 scientific articles. She is a scholar, teacher, and Director of the newly-created Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA. Maryanne began her work in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psycholinguistics at the Department of Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University, where she also completed her doctorate. A staunch advocate for children and global literacy, Maryanne designed the Rave-O, reading intervention for children with dyslexia and co-founded Curious Learning, a global literacy initiative.

Maryanne joins me today to discuss the neuroscience of reading. She explains how the act of reading creates circuits in our brains and allow us to gain a deeper perspective and cultivate empathy. She illustrates how the modern reader’s tendency to skim through reading mediums impacts their memory and democracy. She also underscores the need for every teacher to understand the science of reading and how reading helps children realize their fullest potential as human beings.

“Deep reading is the ability to bear all of our best and most sophisticated intellectual processes: the discernment and evaluation of truth, beauty, and ‘other’.” – Maryanne Wolf