Processing Visual Images

I WORK WITH motivated college students, some with dsylexia. When they read these words or recognise someone's face, some of the same parts of the brain are involved. Psychologists in the UK are investigating this with the aim of trying to understand and even help those with reading problems caused by dyslexia. I'm trying to work through new course training materials, focusing on enhancing the visual dimension of the technical information. My work sometimes involves sketching out patterns, like those in the Moleskine at left. Professor Padraic Monaghan of the University of Lancaster has written how neuroimaging studies have revealed that the brain processes visual images of faces in an area of the right hemisphere known as the "occipitotemporal cortex" (OTC), while visual words are processed in a corresponding area in the left hemisphere. You can certainly survive without being able to put names to faces but it's much harder to compete successfully if you cannot put words to ideas.

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Ashok Jansari -- "Imaging may help those with dyslexia" in the Home News section of The Irish Times, 9 September 2008.

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