REVIEW Neurobiological Substrates of Illiteracy

Comparable subjects except for the knowledge of orthography and school attendance in the proper age provided the case material for a series of studies that are reviewed. The results suggest that the acquisition of or thographic skills provides a basis for changes in the pattern of activation of the brain. NEUROSCIENTIST 6(6):475–482, 2000 KEY WORDS Illiteracy, Language, Reading, Writing, Learning, Brain organization The brain can be understood as an organ that adapts to several types of internal and external influences. The in-teraction of these complex concurrent stimuli along life shapes the highly differentiated biologic arrangement of the brain and its consequent physiology, at any given time. The past years have seen a significant development of the knowledge about the neural substrate of language in its oral and written forms. This is, in part, the result of understanding acquired oral and written language disor