02/19/2026
🧠New Stanford research adds to the growing body of evidence: reading changes the brain, and so does the lack of appropriate instruction.
Researchers found that the brain region responsible for fluent word recognition (the visual word form area) is smaller or less detectable in students with dyslexia, but grows when students receive intensive, evidence-based intervention.
Let’s pause on what that means for our schools:
This is not about effort.
This is not about motivation.
This is not about “waiting for development.”
Instruction is the variable that changes the brain.
In the study:
✔️ Students who received structured intervention made significant reading gains
✔️ Their reading brain circuitry became more developed and detectable
❌ Students who did not receive intervention showed no meaningful change
This has major implications for MTSS, early screening, and special education:
• Screening without immediate action is not prevention
• Data collection without instructional change does not improve outcomes
• “Wait-to-fail” is not a neutral decision, it is a neurological one
If we truly believe in early intervention, then access to trained educators, evidence-based structured literacy, and timely evaluation cannot be optional or delayed by systems barriers.
Because the science is clear:
The right instruction doesn’t just improve test scores, it builds the reading brain.
đź”— https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2026/02/reading-specific-region-differs-in-dyslexic-brain.html
