Learning a second alphabet for a first language

For adults, becoming fluent in a foreign language, particularly one with a new alphabet, can be challenging. This may be because their brain has been specialized by their first language. It is unclear whether the so-called visual word form area (VWFA) -- a brain region that responds to letters -- is similarly inflexible in adulthood.

Lea Martin, Julie Fiez, and colleagues taught undergraduate university students how to read a fictional writing system called HouseFont, which assigns images of houses to English phonemes. Participants achieved proficiency in this pseudo writing system akin to a first-grade reading level. After the training, the researchers observed increased VWFA activity that predicted participants' reading speed. This effect was not observed in the parahippocampal place area -- a brain region that has been shown to respond selectively to images of houses. These findings suggest HouseFont was acquired as an additional alphabet, and show how learning a new writing system shapes the reading brain.