Several regions of the left half of the brain must work in concert together. This is the reading brain at work:
As illustrated by this diagram:
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The base of the brain’s frontal lobe, or inferior frontal cortex, is responsible for phoneme pronunciation and articulation. The top, back part of the temporal lobe (the parietal-temporal cortex) is responsible for phoneme analysis and phoneme-grapheme association. Together, these two areas of the brain drive the phonological processing system.
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The brain’s “letterbox,” or visual word form area, is located in the temporal-occipital cortex. This area of the brain drives the orthographic processing system.
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The brain’s temporal lobe areas are responsible for language comprehension: connecting words with context to make meaning.
At the junction of the parietal, occipital, and temporal lobes is the planum temporale. This is the area of the brain where the phonological processing and orthographic processing systems connect in less than a quarter of a second when our eyes read printed text.
