The brain uses a minimum effort approach to read text
2020
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
An information-theoretic model is proposed to explain cognitive resourcing occurring while reading. In a study in which participants read sentences from Wikipedia entries, information gain, a theoretic measure that quantifies the specificity of a word given its topic context, modulates word-synchronised brain activity in the EEG. The effect persists for individual and unseen brain responses since a classifier trained on EEG data can successfully predict information gain from previously unseen EEG. The findings suggest that biological information processing seeks to maximise performance subject to constraints on information capacity.
Information gain modulates brain activity evoked by reading
Tuukka Ruotsalo
Added on: 07-03-2020
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63828-5[2] https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/the-brain-uses-a-minimum-effort-approach-to-read-text-336028
