How do our brains carry out the process of reading? A professor emeritus guides us through this fascinating exploration of a high-precision neural mechanism.

The film structures itself around a central question: how to reconcile the cultural singularity that is reading, developed recently by our single species, with the slow pace of genetic evolution, and therefore with the fixity of brain biology?

Stanislas Dehaene proposed an astonishing scientific hypothesis: neuronal recycling. In other words, our cultural inventions, such as reading, result in the diversion of pre-existing brain function.

English subtitles when narration is in French.

Also available in French: Les chemins de la lecture