Influence of reading habits on cerebral plasticity for discourse comprehension in aging

Abstract

The goal of this study was to evaluate the influence of reading habits on cerebral plasticity in the performance of a discourse comprehension task in aging. The main hypothesis was that participants with higher frequency and quality of reading habits should exhibit reduced brain activity because the task should be easier for them. two groups of native French speakers, 16 young adults and 16 elderly adults, participated in a task using the nirS (near-infrared spectroscopy) technique. They read short stories and answered true or false probes after each one. They also completed a questionnaire about their previous reading habits. The results show that the more experienced readers had higher activation in the superior left region of the prefrontal cortex while they were reading the stories but lower activation in the same region when they were retrieving the information to answer the probe. Thus, more effort is required to acquire and maintain the information needed to answer, and this effort makes it easier to give the answer. These results reinforce the hypothesis that brain plasticity is promoted by cognitive activities throughout the lifespan.

Narrative Discourse in Young and Older Adults: Behavioral and NIRS Analyses

“…Furthermore, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex had already been highlighted as a potential modulator of discourse comprehension. This region was observed to be more active in older participants who had good reading habits, but less active when these participants answered questions about their reading (Martin et al, 2012 ). This over-activation may reflect compensatory strategies in older adults, who possibly recruit more attentional resources while reading to maximize information encoding or make more efforts to properly integrate information.…”

Brain plasticity and rehabilitation by using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

“…From the other hand, a recent application was related to older age and the evolution of the cognitive functions. For example a recent study evaluated the influence of reading habits on cerebral plasticity in the performance of a discourse comprehension task in aging (Martin, Desrochers, Demers, Scherer & Ska, 2012). The main hypothesis was that participants with higher frequency and quality of reading habits should exhibit reduced brain activity because the task should be easier for them.…”

Neuroanatomical correlates of macrostructural receptive abilities in narrative discourse in unilateral left hemisphere stroke: A behavioural and voxel‐based morphometry study

“…At the individual level, knowledge of the topic (Shapiro, 2004) and of discourse genre (narrative versus expository; Clinton et al., 2020; Mar et al., 2021), literacy abilities (Mellard et al., 2010), level of schooling (Mackenzie, 2000), age (Mackenzie, 2000; Martin et al., 2018) and reading/writing habits (Martin et al., 2012) are variables that can influence discourse processing. To date, most studies on narrative comprehension have been conducted with adults from developed countries (e.g., Martin et al., 2018; Whitney et al., 2009; Nicholas & Brookshire, 1995), where education levels are higher than in developing countries according to the education index of the Human Development Reports (United Nations Development Programme, 2020).…”