Evidências a favor da reciclagem neuronal para a alfabetização

Abstract

The aim of this paper is arguing that neurons must be recycled to learn how to deal with the recognition of the written word. The empirical evidence is given by neuroscience results. They demonstrate that: 1st, universally, there is a specialized region in the brain for recognizing the written word, the occipito-temporal ventral region; 2nd, neurons belonging to the mentioned region are not bio-psychologically programmed for recognizing the written word; 3rd, recognition is possible thanks to learning mechanisms, namely, to humans’ neuronal plasticity; to specialization of secondary and tertiary regions and to the interconnections among various language and cognitive regions, which allow recognizing the articulation of graphic invariant features, resulting in letter(s) that represent phonemes both with the function of distinguishing meaning. The paper ends with paleographic findings which show how metonymic processes played a role, structuring written systems and adapting them to the processing constraints of the human brain.