{"id":136,"date":"2008-01-23T16:37:45","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T20:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=136"},"modified":"2008-01-23T16:37:45","modified_gmt":"2008-01-23T20:37:45","slug":"caleb-crain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=136","title":{"rendered":"Caleb Crain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wonderful New Yorker<\/a> article. <\/p>\n

Favorite passage: <\/p>\n

At some point, as a child progresses from decoding to fluent reading, the route of signals through her brain shifts. Instead of passing along a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dorsal route\u00e2\u20ac\u009d through occipital, temporal, and parietal regions in both hemispheres, reading starts to move along a faster and more efficient \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ventral route,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is confined to the left hemisphere. With the gain in time and the freed-up brainpower, Wolf suggests, a fluent reader is able to integrate more of her own thoughts and feelings into her experience. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The secret at the heart of reading,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Wolf writes, is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the time it frees for the brain to have thoughts deeper than those that came before.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Imaging studies suggest that in many cases of dyslexia the right hemisphere never disengages, and reading remains effortful.<\/p>\n

In a recent book claiming that television and video games were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153making our minds sharper,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the journalist Steven Johnson argued that since we value reading for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153exercising the mind,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d we should value electronic media for offering a superior \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cognitive workout.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But, if Wolf\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s evidence is right, Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s metaphor of exercise is misguided. When reading goes well, Wolf suggests, it feels effortless, like drifting down a river rather than rowing up it. It makes you smarter because it leaves more of your brain alone. Ruskin once compared reading to a conversation with the wise and noble, and Proust corrected him. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much better than that, Proust wrote. To read is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to receive a communication with another way of thinking, all the while remaining alone, that is, while continuing to enjoy the intellectual power that one has in solitude and that conversation dissipates immediately.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wonderful New Yorker article. Favorite passage: At some point, as a child progresses from decoding to fluent reading, the route of signals through her brain shifts. Instead of passing along a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dorsal route\u00e2\u20ac\u009d through occipital, temporal, and parietal regions in both hemispheres, reading starts to move along a faster and more efficient \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ventral route,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which … Continue reading Caleb Crain<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-2c","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}