In bilingual readers, the visual cortex processes Latin and Chinese characters differently

Nearly half of humanity speaks more than one language, and many adults can read and master several writing systems. How does the visual cortex adapt to the recognition of words written with different characters? To answer this question, Laurent Cohen at Paris Brain Institute and the Unicog team led by Stanislas Dehaene at NeuroSpin, CEA’s neuroimaging center, studied the brains of 31 bilingual people.