Editorial

THE BRAIN, THE MIND AND READING IN THE INFORMATION AGE

Complex cognitive processes such as reading and comprehension based on cognitive neuroscience concepts has made it possible to find new explanations as to how working memory works, making it a key component in the comprehension process; this high relevance to working memory processes, inhibition of distraction, novelty seeking, and context codification, among others, can be found in prefrontal Cortex (CPF) area and its established structures in the neuroanatomical and hierarchical organization of brain function. This implies that both working memory, such as language and understanding brain structures are in intimate and in a working relationship, within a multidimensional process which allows us to understand how we cannot discern cognitive processes independently but rather a constant interrelation of cognitive, cognitive-linguistic, emotional and motivational variables, all thanks to brain structures. The need to understand those components that enable human performance in several areas has become the subject of this study in recent decades and even more nowadays.

A more in-depth study on the elements of the brain-mind relationship allows us to better understand the new generation of skills at a school level and how cognitive processes such as working memory influence school performance in people, in their early years, in areas such as reading. With this kind of research, teaching-learning processes will be improved and it will empower new generations of readers, who are in a digital age with plenty of not only valuable and relevant information, but also harmful and often irresponsibly disclosed information, able to be filtered and selectively processed. Current studies of the brain as well as reading, will also consider new information technologies as a tool for cognitive empowerment. The acquisition of more and better reading learning skills, as well as the ability to access new knowledge may have shortcomings, however, with difficulties which may prove to have a flaw in the ability to understand data processing in human beings as the reading process is unraveled functioning through the new technology age generation with new research issues which cannot be described with a pen and paper, and which otherwise would be seen in the digital age as a world of possibilities to give response to different questions and challenges that arise against linguistic and cognitive abilities of new generations to come.

PhD. Johana Escudero Cabarcas
Docente-Investigadora Grupo Sinapsis Educativa y Social Universidad Simón Bolívar