0:02

Hi, I'm Lindsay.

0:03

And I'm Marshall. Welcome to Tumble, the

0:05

show where we explore stories of science discovery.

0:08

Today, we're talking about how reading

0:10

works in the brain. Like

0:12

what happens when we use our eyes to look at

0:14

words on a page? Well, reading

0:17

isn't just about our eyes. In fact,

0:20

what happens when people read with their

0:22

fingers could change what we

0:24

think we know about the science

0:26

of how we read.

0:34

Okay, so Marshall, do you know what

0:36

it's called when you read with your fingers? I

0:40

guess getting a feel for the material.

0:44

I suppose we're talking about Braille. Yes,

0:47

I'm glad you got to that eventually. Because

0:51

today on our show, we're going to learn about

0:53

Braille and its invention

0:55

from a writer who spent years

0:58

learning to read it. And

1:00

then we're going to hear from a neuroscientist

1:02

about why Braille might be

1:04

the key to understand how we

1:07

all read.

1:08

Ooh, history and science. I think

1:10

this is a cue for some old timey music.

1:13

Not yet. Not yet. Okay.

1:16

Hold off on the old timey music. We're going

1:19

to

1:20

start with

1:22

Andrew Leland. Andrew is

1:24

a writer who loves to read but is slowly

1:27

losing his vision. And it made him

1:29

curious about reading while blind.

1:32

He wondered,

1:33

well, what does it mean now

1:35

that I'm a blind reader? What is a blind reader? And

1:37

who are the blind readers who came before me? Those

1:40

are great questions. But I'm also wondering,

1:42

like, as a sighted person or someone

1:45

who has sight, what does it mean to be blind?

1:47

That is a great question. Because

1:50

being blind doesn't mean the same

1:52

thing for everyone who identifies

1:55

as blind or low vision.

1:56

Very, very few blind

1:59

people see now. at all. So it's really

2:01

only about 10 or 15% of

2:05

blind people who have no light perception.

2:07

The rest see something and there's a really wide

2:09

range of what that something is. Like right now I can

2:11

see, it's kind of like looking through

2:14

a little toilet paper tube or paper towel tube.

2:16

What I see in that little tube I can see pretty well

2:19

but it's a fraction of what an old person

2:21

sees.

2:22

Well that's really interesting. So blindness

2:24

isn't just like your eyes are close. It's

2:27

different for everyone. Exactly. But

2:29

it does mean the experience of reading

2:32

is different.

2:32

So Andrew began to look

2:35

into

2:35

the history of blind readers as

2:37

he became one himself. And

2:39

he found that for much of that history there

2:42

weren't many blind readers because

2:44

there wasn't a good way for blind people

2:47

to read. But that started to

2:49

change 200 years ago in Paris.

2:52

In the 18th century in France we

2:56

saw the first ever schools

2:58

for the blind in the world.

3:00

That first school for the blind was called

3:02

the School for Blind Youth. An early

3:04

student at that school was a kid named Louis Braille.

3:07

Oh, so this is the guy who invented

3:10

Braille, right? There's

3:12

some foreshadowing here for sure. Louis

3:15

Braille lost his sight in an accident

3:18

when he was a little kid. His

3:20

parents knew he was smart so they

3:22

worked hard and got him into

3:24

the School for Blind Youth.

3:26

And when he was there, there was

3:28

a French inventor named Charles

3:31

Barbier. Or if you don't speak French,

3:34

Charles Barbier. Andrew's clearly

3:36

very proud of that French accent.

3:39

Barbier was visiting the school

3:41

to share his invention. And

3:44

so Barbier, Barbier,

3:47

had come up with this system

3:49

that he called écréiteur nachteun,

3:52

or night writing. So it was like

3:54

a kind of writing that you could read in the dark. But

3:57

was Barbier blind himself? No.

3:59

No, he wasn't. He just thought that

4:02

he had made something that could be useful

4:04

for blind people.

4:05

So what was knight writing like?

4:07

It was a system of raised dots,

4:10

pushed up through paper with a pointy tool

4:12

called an awl. Each letter

4:14

was made from a different

4:16

pattern of dots. How were the dots

4:18

like a pattern? Well,

4:19

there were 12 dots on two

4:22

lines running parallel to each other.

4:24

Each line was six dots long,

4:27

and how the dots were raised or not

4:29

raised told you what letter you

4:31

were reading.

4:32

And so he went to the blind school that was relatively

4:35

new, and he said, Hey, what do you guys think of this? And

4:37

they said, Interesting, let's share it with the students. And

4:40

they did? They did. And

4:43

the students, including Louis Braille, said,

4:45

Longue, this is

4:47

wonderful, but it's kind of annoying that you

4:49

have to run your fingers up and down and back and forth

4:51

because, like, you can't really read that quickly.

4:54

It took the students a long time

4:56

to feel around and make out which

4:58

of the 12 dots

4:59

were on each letter. They made putting

5:02

together whole words a really

5:04

slow process. Probably too slow

5:07

if you want to read, like, a 5000-word text. Yeah.

5:11

And so the genius that Braille had

5:13

was, he said, What

5:15

if we just cut down the number of dots?

5:17

Braille cut the number of dots in half,

5:20

from 12 to 6.

5:22

He also added capital letters and

5:24

punctuation.

5:25

And then he shared this system

5:27

with his fellow blind students, and they

5:29

loved it. Braille's system

5:32

was a big improvement over what

5:34

the students had had before. Raise

5:37

letters, which

5:38

was basically just taking regular

5:40

print letters and raising them above

5:43

the page so he could feel out the shape.

5:45

It's kind of like if you have a fancy

5:47

invitation

5:48

or something. So I guess it's harder

5:50

to feel out a letter than feeling the dots? Yes.

5:53

The raised letter system made sense

5:56

to sighted teachers because they

5:58

could read it, but it didn't make sense.

7:59

the beginning i see how my ever

8:02

in understand where it to my finger

8:04

salute you can run your finger for dissipative brown

8:07

and you miserly running your fingers across

8:09

side of that house right is just

8:11

like well there's a bunch of those

8:14

with lots of practice andrew

8:16

began to recognize his arms his

8:19

letters and then we're

8:20

really slow so

8:23

been blind since they were little and they

8:25

read for all like all

8:27

means answering their fingers

8:29

they can just zapped their fingers of

8:31

as the page and they can read it or imo

8:34

clogs up on

8:38

matter for years now and i'm stillness

8:40

he

8:43

began by smoothly words

8:46

really speaks to

8:49

technique that and now he

8:51

makes a had a meeting rail

8:54

in which is cool because

8:56

he can need it without a lie dance

8:59

and he found himself doing

9:01

something

9:01

really surprised

9:04

i noticed that like as i go from one

9:07

side of the pays to the other my head

9:09

is turning like i'm watching a tennis match

9:11

on the ceiling when

9:12

it he's like got his head on the pillow

9:14

and he's reading with his fingers but his head is moving

9:17

back and forth yeah

9:18

it's kind of like his head is

9:20

tracking where his

9:21

fingers are moving

9:22

it's and he says it's something

9:24

he really can't control and

9:26

less he intentionally tries

9:28

to stop at us that's

9:30

pretty

9:31

weird and cool but

9:33

i think it's because my brain is

9:36

like there's some part of my brain

9:38

that is like the reading visual reading part of my

9:40

brain has been activated when

9:43

i'm doing tactile reading said

9:45

tactile means your sense of touch right

9:47

yes sir andrew thanks there's some

9:49

part of his brain that triggers the motion of

9:51

reading with his eyes even though not using

9:53

them at all

9:54

yeah i totally

9:56

mystified by this i was

9:58

too

9:59

It made me wonder, what's really going

10:02

on in the brain when we read? And is it different

10:05

if you're doing it by eyes or by

10:07

touch? So I found

10:09

a neuroscientist who could help

10:11

us answer this question, because he studies

10:14

reading

10:14

and braille. And

10:16

we'll meet him right after this break.

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So before the break, we heard about Andrew's

11:39

bedtime braille reading mystery.

11:42

He found himself moving his head back

11:44

and forth as if his eyes were moving across

11:46

the page even though it was his fingers

11:49

doing the moving.

11:50

Like he was possessed by the spirit

11:52

of literature.

11:54

Someone is grabbing

11:56

hold of his head.

13:59

to answer that specific question,

14:02

we need to understand a bit about

14:04

how reading works in the brain. And

14:07

the first thing to know is that our brains aren't

14:09

built for the purpose of reading.

14:11

Once you learn how to read and write,

14:14

your brain seems to be like it's set

14:16

up to read and write. But it's not something that our brains

14:18

evolved for. It's something that we kind

14:20

of like learn as a cultural skill.

14:23

What does he mean by a cultural skill?

14:26

Well, he means it's something

14:28

we learn to live and function

14:30

in the culture that we've built together as

14:33

humans, like, you know, in our towns,

14:35

cities and

14:36

communities and in the world. But

14:38

reading and writing, like Braille's system,

14:41

are human inventions. And

14:43

it's a skill to learn

14:45

how to use them.

14:46

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. It's something we've figured

14:48

out how to do, like play tennis, rather than

14:51

having evolved to do.

14:52

Exactly. But our brains

14:54

obviously store the information we

14:56

need to be able to read somewhere.

15:00

Well, where do they store it?

15:02

Point to your temple and like go right

15:04

there. And on the underside

15:06

sort of towards the edge, there's this little

15:09

bit of cortex that people have been arguing

15:11

about for a long time, but it's called the

15:13

visual word form area. So

15:16

it's like somewhere around your ear. To

15:18

be more precise, it's just in front

15:20

of the top part of your left

15:22

ear. Ah.

15:24

And this visual word form area

15:27

is named for the idea that words show up

15:29

there in a way that you can see them in your mind.

15:32

But this area has another nickname, too.

15:34

Sometimes it's called the brain letterbox.

15:37

I think I like the name letterbox better because it

15:39

seems like you're picking the letters up off the page

15:42

and like dropping them in a little slot in your

15:44

head. Exactly. Or they're

15:47

kind of like blocks that you've like fished

15:50

out of some box. And just

15:52

like bouncing around. Yeah.

15:53

But you have

15:55

to like build those blocks by

15:57

learning to read.

15:59

blocks are built around the writing

16:02

system you learn first. And

16:05

if you learn how to read English, it responds

16:07

to the Roman alphabet. The

16:10

Roman alphabet being like the 26 letters

16:12

we use in English where like we learn Chinese

16:14

or something, it would be different. Exactly.

16:17

If you learn how to read Hebrew, it responds

16:19

to Hebrew letters or Arabic letters

16:22

or Chinese letters. Quick question

16:24

though, what does it mean that this area of the brain

16:27

responds to the letters? Like how

16:29

do they know that? Do they ask it? You

16:32

put people in a huge magnet

16:35

and it's called a magnetic

16:37

resonance imaging machine. That's like the

16:40

main way that we do brain scans. Okay,

16:43

so they get a magnet and that's what tells us

16:45

what's coping. This is a magnet

16:48

speaking. Yeah, if you just put

16:50

the magnet on your brain, it's like, oh, look right here.

16:53

Something going on. No, it's

16:55

a giant magnet you can read

16:57

and obviously. I

17:00

guess, obviously.

17:01

So scientists have

17:03

gotten people to read inside

17:05

of these giant magnets and it's shown

17:08

that this little visual word form

17:10

area seems to be getting used

17:12

more than other parts of the brain,

17:15

whether they're reading by sight or

17:17

by touch.

17:19

That same bit of cortex seems

17:22

to be more active when

17:24

you're reading Braille.

17:25

Wait a second. So this area that scientists

17:28

literally named as a place where letters form

17:30

visually works when letters aren't

17:32

even visual. What does that mean? There's

17:35

a lot of uncertainty about exactly what

17:37

that means. Like we don't necessarily know if just

17:41

because the same brain part is involved, if it's

17:43

doing the same thing in people who are blind

17:46

and people who are sighted, but there's at least some

17:48

suggestion that there's this like little

17:50

bit of cortex that is involved

17:53

in written language

17:55

whether or not you're reading it

17:57

by sight or reading it by touch.

18:00

Okay, that's interesting about

18:02

little bits of cortex and whatnot, but what's

18:05

he saying? I

18:07

know, it's a bit confusing.

18:08

So I tried to describe

18:11

to Simon what I thought he meant, just

18:13

to check if I had it right. So

18:16

it doesn't matter whether you're

18:19

touching letters or whether you're looking at

18:21

letters, it's going into the same letterbox,

18:23

the same bit of brain.

18:25

That's what at least some people, I mean, whatever,

18:28

I'm just such a scientist. At least some people

18:30

think that that's what's going on.

18:32

Ah, scientists never going to say they're 100%

18:35

certain about everything. Or

18:37

anything. Yeah. But

18:41

wow, that totally makes sense. It means that the

18:43

visual word form area is

18:45

probably not just visual. Exactly.

18:48

For a long time, scientists

18:50

have studied reading as a way that we

18:52

get written information through

18:55

our eyes. But Braille

18:57

shows that there might be something even

18:59

more important to know about reading that's

19:02

not at all about seeing

19:04

or sight. And Simon

19:06

says that adds to the mystery of

19:09

how reading works in

19:10

the brain. Why is it

19:12

that this thing seems to be here across

19:15

people who come from lots of different backgrounds, have

19:18

lots of different experiences? Why are we

19:20

seeing it so consistently in exactly the

19:22

same part of the brain? And the

19:24

Braille work just pushes that even farther. He's

19:27

still not sure about what's happening in

19:29

this part of the brain?

19:30

Yeah, no one is. And that's

19:32

why there's a lot of debate about it. There

19:35

are some clues that the letterbox plays

19:37

an important role in reading, no matter

19:39

how we read.

19:40

But scientists like Simon have

19:42

only begun to ask questions about it. And there's so much more to

19:44

discover by studying Braille. Maybe

19:49

we can rename the visual word form area

19:52

to the brain word blocky box. Great

19:54

idea.

19:55

But what about how Andrew reads Braille at night

19:57

with his head moving back and forth?

19:59

What can that tell us about why he does that? Well,

20:02

there's been no specific studies on

20:04

that yet, but researchers

20:07

have found that if your brain's letterbox

20:10

was built on a different writing system

20:12

than Braille, you're going to have some

20:14

struggles with

20:14

it. It's really challenging to

20:17

learn how to read Braille after you've learned

20:19

how to read by sight.

20:20

So Andrew's far from alone in being a slow

20:23

but steady Braille reader.

20:24

Absolutely, because even though Braille

20:27

seems to use the same part of the brain,

20:29

it's processed differently. There's

20:31

research out there that suggests that

20:34

learning to read Braille is kind of like

20:37

recognizing the texture. What?

20:39

I don't get it. How can you read a texture?

20:42

Well, think about it this way.

20:44

People who read by sight fixate

20:47

their eyes on a word and then process

20:50

it into information to get the meaning

20:52

of the word. Fluent Braille

20:54

readers don't stop on

20:56

each word.

20:57

Like Andrew said, their fingers

20:59

move like lightning

21:00

across the page. But

21:02

when we touch, putting your finger

21:05

on something isn't...that's not how

21:07

you get the information. The information comes from

21:10

the movement itself. The sheer pattern

21:12

that goes across your fingertips while you move is

21:15

how you're getting information in. Huh.

21:18

So maybe like how sighted readers learn how to recognize shapes

21:20

as letters, blind readers learn to recognize

21:22

certain patterns of dots

21:24

as words. The blocks in their

21:26

letterbox are formed through touch. It's

21:29

possible, and I think this

21:31

could help explain

21:32

why Andrew reads Braille

21:34

with his head moving back and forth in the darkness.

21:37

His brain is shifting between its default

21:40

original setting of visual

21:42

print reading and this

21:44

new system of reading by touch that's

21:46

just trying to make the two systems work

21:49

together in any way that it can.

21:58

with

22:00

Andrew's brain, it shows that even 200

22:02

years after its invention,

22:05

Braille is still surprising

22:07

us with something new.

22:08

Well thanks, Louis Braille, for inventing

22:11

this cool cultural skill. Good

22:13

job with the updated vocab.

22:17

So I wondered what Louis Braille

22:19

would think if he could see all

22:22

that's been done and learned with his invention.

22:25

Here's what Sike said.

22:26

He might seem like amazed that

22:30

thinking happened in the brain. He might just be amazed

22:32

that he could measure a brain at all.

22:34

Some people in Braille's time

22:36

didn't even know thoughts came from your head. Yeah,

22:39

they thought they learned things by

22:41

heart. I guess that makes sense. I

22:43

think I store information in my heart. The

22:48

most important

22:49

information is stored in your heart.

22:52

But

22:52

when I asked Andrew, he said he thought

22:55

Braille would be excited to learn that

22:57

you can now read almost

22:58

any book you want in Braille.

23:01

He would be dancing down

23:04

a wall, a French dance, he would have known,

23:06

but they'll just not going to. He'd be dancing

23:08

the flute, Jean-La Bluep. Because,

23:11

man, are you kidding me? He'd think

23:14

that Braille would just break out the dance

23:17

moves. Everyone

23:19

knew that the human group could

23:22

just make it happen. The

23:27

humans have invented something we have to learn how

23:30

to do before our brains are set up

23:35

to do. Can you think of other cultural

23:38

skills besides reading

23:39

and writing? Are these

23:41

things that you do every day part of your

23:43

routine,

23:45

are they cultural skills, or are

23:47

they things that were actually evolved

23:49

to do as humans?

23:51

For example, when you get up in the morning, you definitely

23:53

evolved to eat, but using a spoon

23:56

might be controlled. I'm

23:58

stuck with your family. and friends,

24:01

what activities humans evolved

24:03

for, and what activities

24:05

are actually cultural skills?

24:08

Are there any that you're not sure

24:10

about?

24:12

Thanks today to Andrew Wieland,

24:14

writer and audio producer. Andrew

24:17

has an excellent book called The Country

24:20

of the Blind, a memoir at the

24:22

end of sight. Full disclosure,

24:24

Andrew is also an advisor on the National

24:27

Science Foundation grant that supports

24:29

this episode. Also thanks

24:31

to Simon Fischerbaum,

24:32

associate professor of psychology

24:35

at Rice University. Special

24:37

thanks to Robert Engelbretson, also

24:39

of Rice University. You can learn

24:41

more about Braille on the bonus interview episode

24:44

on our Patreon at patreon.com

24:45

slash normalpodcast.

24:47

And we'll have more free resources about

24:49

Braille and the science of reading available

24:52

on the blog on our website, sciencepodcastsforkids.com.

24:55

This material is based

24:57

upon work supported by the National Science Foundation

25:00

under grant number 2148711, engaging

25:04

blind, visually impaired, and sighted students

25:06

in STEM with storytelling through podcasts.

25:09

Special thanks to the team who helped with

25:11

this episode, Dr. Peter Walters

25:14

and Dr. Carrie Cipollo, and the

25:16

rest of the team at Independent Science. Also

25:18

thanks to Dr. Kelly Reidinger

25:20

and Dr. Martin Storksdieck at Oregon State

25:23

University's STEM Research Center, and

25:25

Dr. Timothy Spock at AUI. Sarah

25:27

Roberson-Lentz

25:28

edited this show and designed

25:30

the episode art. Peter Walters

25:32

is our editorial consultant for the

25:34

series. Elliot Hajaj is our

25:36

production assistant. And Gary Calhoun-James

25:39

engineered and mixed this episode. I'm

25:42

Lindsay Patterson, and I wrote this episode.

25:44

And I'm Marshall Escamilla, and I made

25:46

all the music and sound design for this episode. Tumble

25:49

is a production of Tumble Media. Thanks

25:51

for listening, and stay tuned for more stories

25:54

of science discovery.

25:59

We finished up that super fun episode.

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That only means one thing. It's time

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for our Patreon birthday shoutouts.

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We got a bunch of them today, so here we go. Chloe

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Olivia, be true to you, stay curious,

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always ask your questions, keep making your hypotheses

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and testing them out, because that's science!

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Mama and Papa love you and are so proud of who

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you are. Happy 7th birthday on October

26:23

13th! To Ulysses, Mama

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and Da love you so much and are so

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glad that you love science. And I am too! Happy

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birthday on October 14th!

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To Florence, happy birthday on October 16th! Mom

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and Dad know you love science just like everyone else

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here! And me! To Isaac,

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keep up your curiosity and passion for history

26:42

and science forever, and happy birthday

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on October 19th!

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To Reed, Mom and Dad love you and

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happy birthday on October 22nd! Happy

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birthday on October 23rd! To Dana,

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Mom and Dad love you very much! Thanks

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to all of you and to everyone who supports Tumble

26:58

on Patreon. If you want to get a birthday shoutout

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of your own like these fine folks,

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simply support Tumble on Patreon at the $5 level

27:05

or higher by going to patreon.com slash

27:07

tumblepodcast. Once again, that's patreon.com

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slash

27:10

tumblepodcast.