The BCBL center has analyzed whether reading causes changes in brain structure and whether genetic components have to do with it. The results have been published in the journal Nature Human Behavior and indicate that reading is related to nine of the 150 measurements analyzed in the brain. These include the key areas of the network. Moreover, they have demonstrated that the genetic component influences two concrete measures: the left hemisphere surface and the upper temporal circumvolation.
To carry out the research, they have used a collection of data on the brain development of adolescents aged 9 to 10 years (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development dataset), which, in addition to affirming the existence of a complex relationship between genes, brain and reading, have concluded that the polygenic skill is partially hereditary and depends on a distributed network.