Neuroimaging reveals hidden communication between brain layers during reading

Language involves many different regions of the brain. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Donders Institute at Radboud University discovered previously hidden connections between brain layers during reading, in a neuroimaging study reported in PNAS.

How is a language represented in the brain? This question is challenging, as language involves many regions throughout the brain that interact in a dynamic way. For instance, when people read a word, they combine 'bottom-up' (lower level) visual information to recognise the letters, and 'top-down' (higher level) cognitive information to recognise the word and retrieve its meaning from memory. Such top-down and bottom-up information streams are notoriously difficult to measure noninvasively (without having to open up the brain).

You may read the whole text here.