system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: The Science of Reading

I just watched a webinar explaining the science of reading. One part spoke about how the human brain is hot-wired from birth to develop pathways between sound and meaning, but not visual and meaning. I.e. infants can naturally learn to associate sounds/words with a specific meaning, but not associate a written word with a specific meaning. This needs to be taught and the brain rewires itself to develop new neural pathways in order to do so.

When someone learns to read, the brain develops a new area called the *visual word form area* or "letterbox," which can actually be seen with an MRI.

My question is: once these connections are made, does learning to speak/read a new language, especially one with different letters or characters (like Mandarin) do the same? Does it create new neural pathways in the brain or use the same ones developed for reading your native language?
gpt
The 'letterbox' in Broca's area exists in people who can't read, it is just that through training we have purposed it for reading. That is an important distinction because that area evolved for *some reason* other than reading. As a result, while most humans are physically capable of reading, 60% of schoolchildren require direct reading instruction to learn to read fluently. When you are teaching children to read, you aren't forming a new area of the brain, you are training an area that is already there for the task.

It is interesting because, physiologically, the letterbox is limited. It is insanely hard to read even just a little outside of your focus, which is why you can only usually read one or two words ahead and it is nearly impossible to read an entire sentence at once, your eyes have to start at the beginning and move through the sentence. You can train to read in your periphery, but it is unnatural feeling.

Onto the answer to your question, yes, the training you receive learning language A helps in learning language B, to the point that it is normally way easier to read and write a new language as opposed to speaking it. You don't get a new Chinese letterbox, you train your existing letterbox to recognize Chinese characters.