ENGLISH speakers struggling with the language鈥檚 bizarre spellings have a
different pattern of brain activity from speakers of Italian, which is spoken as
it is written.
Using a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, Uta Frith of University
College London and her colleagues studied the active parts of the brain when
people were reading. This confirmed Frith鈥檚 suspicion that English and Italian
speakers process text differently. 鈥淵ou use the same brain areas in the two
languages, but the system components have different weightings,鈥� says Frith
(Nature Neuroscience, vol 3, p 91).