"The scans show that spelling irregular words requires more brainpower than simple ones. Specifically, areas of the brain that process word meaning show greater activity. Researchers say their findings could prompt schools to change how they teach children language."

"Laura-Ann Petitto of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, US, and colleagues asked 12 young adults to imagine spelling a word they heard via headphones. They were then asked to judge whether the same word presented on a screen was correctly spelt."

"Each participant was tested on a total of 90 words while lying in a brain-scanning machine. A third of these words had regular, phonetic spelling � such as "blink" � in which their letters corresponded directly to the sounds of the word. Another 30 words had irregular spelling, including the word "yacht", while the remaining 30 were nonsense words, like "shelm". "We wanted to know how words are stored in our mental dictionary," explains Petitto."

"The scans revealed that more regions of subjects' brains became active when they heard words with irregular spellings, rather than regular ones. In particular, they showed greater activity in regions such as the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) � an area believed to store information about word meaning. Another area that showed more activity was one called the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), which helps process printed text."

"By comparison, one of the few brain areas that showed slightly greater activation for regular words than irregular words was the superior temporal gyrus (STG). Petitto says this is significant because the STG is involved in auditory processing. She suggests
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