A New Brain Study Finds Reading is a Complex, Flexible Process- Implications for the Social Media version of SOR by Dr. Sam Bommarito.
A new and important study has recently been released. It is a meta-analysis of studies on the brain and its functions. Overall, the study reports data from 3031 subjects and 5444 activation peaks in a total of 163 experiments. I briefly discussed this study in one of my latest blogs. However, now that I’ve had a chance to really look over it, I realized that this study has the potential to be a real game-changer in our thinking about how we should conduct our literacy instruction. Here is a summary of what the study was about. It is taken from the website of Dr ASKY. “Dr ASKY” refers to a LinkedIn company profile and associated individuals, including the owner, Dr. Asif Sohrab, who is an MD doctor, entrepreneur, and science communicator. This page has over 11 M followers. Here is a LINK to the quote below. Here is a link to the main Facebook page for ASKY LINK..
Additionally, here is the link to the study that the Dr. ASKY site is analyzing: LINK. The name of that study is The ‘reading’ brain: Meta-analytic insight into functional activation during reading in adults by Sabrina Turker, Beatrice Fumagall, Philipp Kuhnke. & Gesa Hartwigsen.
My thoughts about this analysis: Of special importance in these remarks is the observation that the brain reconfigures itself depending on how complex reading is. For instance, when comparing nonsense pseudo-words, the regions accessed are the ones the SOR folks always discuss —the regions for sounding unfamiliar words. However, the evidence supports the theory that the brain uses two routes depending on familiarity. THE BRAIN ACCESSES REAL WORDS USING THE PARTS OF THE BRAIN THAT ENGAGE MEMORY AND MEANING. So, there is more to reading real words than simply storing the code. As a teacher, I think it follows that there is more to reading than simply breaking the code. In addition, silent reading invokes more than the reader simply listening to themselves sounding out words. In fact, during silent reading, the brain actually suppresses vocalization. My take as a teacher is that silent reading comprehension involves more than just listening comprehension. That calls into question SOR’s definitions of comprehension.
The Dr. Askey site goes on to criticize the fact that the common tasks used in many of the brain studies don’t fully capture the natural reading brain’s activity. It suggests that understanding these differences could enhance our understanding of reading difficulties, such as dyslexia.
MIKE DROP
The current situation on social media seems to have evolved into an “us/them” winner-take-all battle about the issue of the best ways to teach reading. The two sides are SOR (as presented in social media) and Balanced Literacy. The dialogue involves defending one side or the other. The SOR side claims that it’s all “settled science” and that SOR should replace Balanced Literacy completely. The dialogue is often contentious. The goal of the Social Media version of SOR seems to be to eliminate Balanced Literacy permanently. The fact that Balanced Literacy means many different things to many different people leaves things open to the use of strawman arguments based on Balanced Literacy at its weakest or arguments based on a complete misunderstanding of what Balanced Literacy is.
One possible outcome of this new study could be that the dialogue could become even more divisive. The study contains research-based information that directly challenges some of the interpretations of Brain Research that form the underpinnings of the media-based SOR’s point of view. Especially since we are at a time in our country’s history when many view individuals with a different point of view as evil. The potential is there for this trend to rip apart our nation.
I want to propose a different path. It is apparent that science isn’t as settled as some claimed. To resolve that, we could ask a new set of questions. Where do both sides seem to agree? Let’s do what P.D. Pearson suggested and focus on practices instead of sides. I’d like to hear from all of you about places where you think we might agree. I’ll go first and suggest that I think we can all agree that some form of systematic phonics should be a part of any literacy program. So should the teaching of comprehension strategies. That means students should learn to internalize and apply these strategies. Finally, there is a growing belief from all sides that the use of the reading/writing connection should be included in literacy lessons. Are there practices on which we can all agree? Do you have others? I’m hoping to hear from you either through the blog or on Facebook. BTW, if you have programs you like, rather than suggest the complete program, instead pick out the practices within the program that research demonstrates are effective and be ready to discuss which students might be effective for. It’s time to find some common ground.
Dare to Dream!
Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the middle taking flak from all sides)
PS If you found the blog through Facebook or Twitter, please consider following it to ensure you won’t miss future posts. Use the “follow” entry on the sidebar of the blog.
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-brain-wide-decision-mice.html#google_vignette
This article caught my eye. It’s the first study to capture “decision-making” in MICE. In other words, neuroscience is just now developing the techniques to study the brain actually THINKING, which is at the heart of the reading process..
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Please READ the Original Papers Before Calling This a “Mic Drop”
Dr. Bommarito, I am not asking you to retract your blog post.
I am not asking you to endorse the Science of Reading, abandon balanced literacy, or accept my interpretation of the evidence.
I am asking you to do something much simpler:
**Please read the papers yourself, carefully and in full.**
I strongly recommend it.
Because there is a serious problem with your post, and it is not fundamentally a disagreement between competing camps in reading instruction.
**The instructional conclusions you draw are not conclusions the study establishes.**
And there is something else your readers need to know immediately.
Substantially the same research team published another paper only months earlier. That paper explicitly describes phonological decoding as **“critical”** to reading and its role as **“crucial.”** More importantly, it did not merely observe a difference in brain activation: the researchers experimentally manipulated a brain region implicated in phonological decoding and **improved pseudoword reading**.
So there is a considerable irony in your declaration:
> **“MIKE DROP.”**
Because if either of these papers contains anything remotely resembling a mic-drop finding relevant to this debate, **it is the earlier paper.**
And it points the other way.
## The paper that should have stopped the “mic drop”
In February 2025, Sabrina Turker, Philipp Kuhnke and Gesa Hartwigsen—three of the four authors of the meta-analysis discussed in your post—were coauthors of:
**“Neurostimulation improves reading and alters communication within reading networks in dyslexia.”**
Its abstract begins with a remarkably clear statement:
> “The left temporo-parietal cortex (TPC) is critical for phonological decoding during reading…”
Not “possibly associated with.”
**Critical.**
The researchers then experimentally manipulated that system.
Facilitating the left TPC **improved pseudoword reading**.
And in their conclusion they describe their results as evidence for its **“crucial role” in phonological decoding**.
Again:
**Critical.**
**Crucial.**
And when the researchers experimentally facilitated the relevant region:
**pseudoword reading improved.**
The paper discusses phonological decoding in terms of learning and retaining sound-symbol relationships. It describes the left TPC as a phonological-decoding center, discusses its importance for novel words and pseudowords, notes its heightened plasticity during early literacy acquisition, and discusses its relationship to intervention response in struggling readers.
This was published in February 2025.
The adult-reading meta-analysis discussed in your blog appeared online in April 2025.
Three researchers—including lead author Sabrina Turker—are common to both.
So this is not some antiquated position subsequently overturned by the paper you cite.
These are virtually contemporaneous publications from substantially the same research program.
And they do not contradict each other.
**That is the central point.**
The researchers find that unfamiliar print places particular demands on phonological decoding and sound-symbol relationships.
They also find that familiar words can engage established orthographic, phonological, lexical and semantic representations rapidly and automatically.
Both are true.
Both belong to a coherent account of skilled reading.
**The researchers do not set these findings against each other. Your post does.**
## Your own description contains the clue
You write:
> “the evidence supports the theory that the brain uses two routes depending on familiarity.”
Yes.
That should have been the clue.
An unfamiliar pseudoword cannot simply be retrieved as an already-established lexical item. It places different demands on the reading system.
A highly familiar real word can recruit established representations rapidly.
But you immediately move from that observation to:
> “THE BRAIN ACCESSES REAL WORDS USING THE PARTS OF THE BRAIN THAT ENGAGE MEMORY AND MEANING.”
And then:
> “there is more to reading real words than simply storing the code. As a teacher, I think it follows that there is more to reading than simply breaking the code.”
But who is claiming that skilled reading consists of **“simply breaking the code”**?
Certainly not these researchers.
Modern reading science does not predict that a skilled adult must laboriously sound out every familiar word from scratch on every encounter.
So the discovery that familiar words recruit established lexical and semantic representations does not refute the importance of decoding.
**It is what we would expect skilled reading to look like after words have become familiar.**
And substantially the same researchers had just published experimental work explicitly describing phonological decoding as **critical** and its role as **crucial**.
The two processes are not rivals.
The existence of rapid lexical and semantic access for familiar words does not somehow erase the importance of phonological decoding for unfamiliar print.
Your own “two routes” description should make that obvious.
Yet the post turns complementary findings into an adversarial argument and then declares victory over a position the researchers themselves do not take.
## And this is where the “mic drop” points the wrong way
If we insist on using the language of “mic drops,” compare the evidentiary claims carefully.
The later paper tells us, among many other things:
**Already-skilled adult readers process familiar words and unfamiliar pseudowords differently.**
Interesting and important.
But that is not an experiment comparing reading instruction.
The earlier paper does something different.
It identifies a region the researchers associate with phonological decoding.
It experimentally facilitates that region.
And:
**pseudoword reading improves.**
The researchers themselves call phonological decoding **“critical”** and describe the region’s role as **“crucial.”**
That is considerably closer to a causal result.
Does that prove synthetic phonics is superior to every alternative instructional method?
**No.**
That would repeat precisely the mistake I am criticizing. Neither neuroscience paper is a comparative trial of classroom phonics programs.
But if you are going to take neuroscience findings and turn them into rhetorical ammunition in the reading wars, you cannot reasonably celebrate the observational finding that familiar words engage memory and meaning while ignoring the experimental finding that facilitating a phonological-decoding system improves reading performance.
**That asymmetry matters.**
If there is a neuroscience “mic drop” anywhere in these two papers, the more causally suggestive result is plainly in the earlier one.
And instead of undermining phonological decoding, it underscores its importance.
That doesn’t prove every proposition advanced under the Science of Reading banner.
But it makes presenting this research program as some sort of neuroscience repudiation of decoding extraordinarily difficult to defend.
## More fundamentally, the study did not test reading instruction
This is the largest problem with the blog post.
You describe the April paper as having:
> “the potential to be a real game-changer in our thinking about how we should conduct our literacy instruction.”
But look at the title:
**“The ‘reading’ brain: Meta-analytic insight into functional activation during reading in adults.”**
**In adults.**
The researchers synthesize a large body of neuroimaging evidence concerning what happens when already-literate adults perform different reading tasks.
There is:
**No systematic-phonics group.**
**No synthetic-phonics group.**
**No balanced-literacy group.**
**No whole-language group.**
**No three-cueing intervention.**
**No comparison of curricula.**
**No instructional intervention at all.**
**No population of beginning readers being taught to read.**
The study does not test the instructional question your post says it potentially changes.
That is not a minor limitation.
**It is the question.**
If the claim concerns how children should be taught to read, evidence about how already-literate adult brains perform reading tasks cannot, by itself, establish the answer.
## Expert performance is not novice instruction
This is a basic distinction.
A concert pianist does not consciously identify every note in a familiar chord.
That does not demonstrate that beginners shouldn’t explicitly learn notes.
An experienced driver does not consciously rehearse each mechanical action involved in changing lanes.
That does not demonstrate that novice drivers shouldn’t be explicitly taught those actions.
Likewise, finding that skilled adults rapidly access established lexical and semantic representations for familiar words does not demonstrate that explicit decoding instruction is unnecessary, excessive or misguided while children are learning to read.
The argument moves from:
**This is how expertise operates after acquisition**
to:
**Therefore this is how expertise should be acquired.**
The evidence required to cross that causal gap is missing.
And the irony becomes difficult to overlook when the same research group is simultaneously publishing work discussing phonological decoding, sound-symbol relationships and early literacy acquisition.
## The silent-reading conclusion simply does not follow
You also write:
> “during silent reading, the brain actually suppresses vocalization.”
Then:
> “My take as a teacher is that silent reading comprehension involves more than just listening comprehension.”
And finally:
> “That calls into question SOR’s definitions of comprehension.”
I would encourage you to read those sentences again and identify the logical connection between the first and the last.
Silent reading and overt reading produce different neural patterns.
Fine.
But:
**silent reading differs from reading aloud**
does not entail:
**therefore Science of Reading has an incorrect definition of comprehension.**
Something is missing.
Linguistic comprehension does not mean listening to oneself pronounce words. Vocabulary, syntax, semantics, inference, discourse comprehension and background knowledge do not become irrelevant merely because vocalization is suppressed.
The empirical finding may be interesting.
**The conclusion you attach to it has not been established.**
## Nor does “reading is complex” settle an instructional dispute
Of course reading is complex.
That is not controversial.
Mathematics is complex.
Music is complex.
Language is complex.
Driving is complex.
The complexity of an acquired skill does not tell us whether its foundational components should be taught explicitly to novices.
So:
**Reading is a complex, flexible process.**
True.
But:
**Therefore strong scientific emphasis on decoding is misguided.**
That conclusion requires additional evidence.
The paper does not provide it.
## Where, exactly, is the evidence for balanced literacy?
Your post explicitly frames the social-media conflict as Science of Reading versus balanced literacy.
So let’s remove the rhetoric and ask what the study actually tested.
Where does Turker et al. show that balanced literacy produces better outcomes?
**Nowhere.**
Where does it validate whole language?
**Nowhere.**
Three-cueing?
**Nowhere.**
Contextual guessing as a strategy for identifying unfamiliar words?
**Nowhere.**
Incidental rather than systematic phonics?
**Nowhere.**
Synthetic phonics versus another phonics method?
**Nowhere.**
Systematic phonics versus balanced literacy?
**Nowhere.**
No such comparison exists in the study.
One cannot declare victory for an instructional theory **in an experiment in which that instructional theory never appeared.**
And yet:
> **“MIKE DROP.”**
This is precisely why the phrase is so unfortunate.
Because there actually is a striking experimental result sitting immediately adjacent to the paper you celebrate.
**Facilitate a system implicated in phonological decoding → pseudoword reading improves.**
And substantially the same researchers describe phonological decoding as:
**“critical.”**
Its role as:
**“crucial.”**
If we’re dropping microphones on the basis of neuroscience, **that microphone has landed on the other side of the stage.**
## The source chain should also concern you
Your post does not initially present a close reading of Turker et al.
Instead, it introduces a summary from “Dr ASKY,” explains that this social-media operation has more than 11 million followers, and later refers to it as the “Dr. Askey site.”
But the scientific paper has identifiable authors.
Its claims can be read directly.
Instead the evidentiary chain becomes:
**Turker et al. → Dr ASKY’s social-media summary → your interpretation of that summary → conclusions about literacy instruction.**
Eleven million followers have no scientific significance.
And every additional interpretive layer increases the possibility that the researchers’ actual claims will be distorted.
For something being presented as a “game-changer,” there is a much simpler approach.
**Read the primary paper.**
And in this case, read the closely related primary paper from the same research group as well.
## “The science isn’t settled” doesn’t rescue the inference
You subsequently write:
> “It is apparent that science isn’t as settled as some claimed.”
Certainly science contains open questions.
But:
**Some questions remain unsettled**
does not entail:
**therefore my preferred alternative has acquired evidentiary support.**
And an adult neuroimaging meta-analysis cannot erase evidence from instructional studies merely by revealing that skilled reading is neurologically complex.
If the question is whether systematic phonics works, examine systematic-phonics research.
If the question is whether balanced literacy works, examine balanced-literacy research.
If the question is which produces better outcomes, examine evidence capable of comparing them.
Adult neuroimaging can tell us enormously interesting things about the reading system.
**It cannot become an instructional trial simply because we would like to draw instructional conclusions from it.**
## So please read the papers
I want to be precise about what I am asking.
**I am not asking you to retract your post.**
I am not asking you to agree with me.
I am not asking you to abandon balanced literacy.
I am not asking you to join a camp.
And I am certainly not asking your readers to trust my account of the science.
I am asking you to read the primary sources yourself.
**Both of them.**
Read the February experimental paper.
Read what substantially the same researchers say about **phonological decoding**.
Read what they say about **sound-symbol relationships**.
Read what they say about **pseudowords**.
Read what they say about **early literacy acquisition**.
Read the experiment in which they facilitate the relevant region and **pseudoword reading improves**.
Read why they use the words **“critical”** and **“crucial.”**
Then read the April meta-analysis carefully.
Read what it actually reports about familiar words, pseudowords, overt reading, covert reading, orthographic processing, phonological processing, lexical processing and semantics.
And notice what it does not study:
**how children should be taught to read.**
Then come back to your own post.
Read:
> “this study has the potential to be a real game-changer in our thinking about how we should conduct our literacy instruction.”
Read:
> “That calls into question SOR’s definitions of comprehension.”
Read the claim that the study:
> “directly challenges some of the interpretations of Brain Research that form the underpinnings of the media-based SOR’s point of view.”
And then read:
> **“MIKE DROP.”**
Now ask:
**Where, precisely, do Turker and her colleagues establish those instructional conclusions?**
I cannot find it.
And beside that paper sits virtually contemporaneous experimental work from substantially the same research team explicitly describing phonological decoding as critical, demonstrating improved pseudoword reading when a decoding-related region is facilitated, and describing its role as crucial.
**The two scientific papers fit together.**
**Your interpretation of them does not.**
## This is now a question of credibility
I don’t say that with anger.
Misreading a scientific paper is not a moral failing. Anyone who reads enough research will eventually misunderstand something.
Changing one’s mind is not embarrassing either. It is an ordinary part of serious intellectual work.
But there is a difference between initially misreading evidence and continuing to characterize it the same way **after the primary evidence has been brought directly to one’s attention.**
Your blog has an audience.
You invoke scientific authority.
You tell teachers that this research may be a “game-changer” for how they conduct literacy instruction.
And you announce a “mic drop” against the opposing position.
Those are strong claims.
They create a corresponding obligation to represent the underlying science accurately.
That is why I strongly recommend reading both papers yourself, carefully and in full.
**Not because I expect you to agree with me.**
**Because you should satisfy yourself that the researchers actually support what you have told your readers they support.**
If you can identify where these researchers draw the instructional conclusions you attribute to their work, show us.
That would advance the discussion.
But if those conclusions aren’t there, then this should no longer be treated as another ideological skirmish between Science of Reading and balanced literacy.
It becomes something much simpler.
A reading-comprehension question:
**What did the researchers actually find?**
**What did the researchers actually conclude?**
**And what conclusions did someone else subsequently place upon their work?**
Those distinctions matter.
The researchers’ own work presents a coherent picture: skilled reading involves multiple interacting systems; unfamiliar print places particular demands on phonological decoding; familiar words can engage established representations rapidly and automatically; and different reading tasks recruit these systems differently.
That does not remotely amount to a repudiation of modern reading science.
And the same research group explicitly describes phonological decoding as **“critical”** and its role as **“crucial.”**
So no, I am not asking for a retraction.
I am asking for something much more elementary.
**Please read the papers.**
Both of them.
Then decide whether your post remains defensible as written.
And if we absolutely must have a “mic drop,” let’s at least be clear about where the stronger experimental result lies:
**The researchers facilitated a brain region implicated in phonological decoding. Pseudoword reading improved. They described phonological decoding as “critical” and its role as “crucial.”**
**That mic drops in the opposite direction.**