Decoded: Brain areas that control how we write words

Washington: By studying stroke victims who have lost the ability to spell, researchers have pinpointed the parts of the brain that control how we write words, shedding new light on the mechanics of language and memory.

For the first time, researchers from Johns Hopkins University in US have linked basic spelling difficulties to seemingly unrelated regions of the brain. Researchers studied 15 years' worth of cases in which 33 people were left with spelling impairments after suffering strokes. Some of the people had long-term memory difficulties, others working-memory issues. With long-term memory difficulties, people cannot remember how to spell words they once knew and tend to make educated guesses.

They could probably, correctly guess a predictably spelled word like 'camp,' but with a more unpredictable spelling like 'sauce,' they might try 'soss.' In severe cases, people trying to spell 'lion' might offer things like 'lonp,' 'lint' and even 'tiger.' With working memory issues, people know how to spell words but they have trouble choosing the correct letters or assembling the letters in the correct order - 'lion' might be 'liot,' 'lin,' 'lino,' or 'liont.'

Researchers used computer mapping to chart the brain lesions of each individual and found that in the long-term memory cases, damage appeared on two areas of the left hemisphere, one towards the front of the brain and the other at the lower part of the brain towards the back. In working memory cases, the lesions were primarily also in the left hemisphere but in a very different area in the upper part of the brain towards the back.