This study used fMRI to investigate the neural and cognitive processes underlying expository technical text comprehension. Better comprehension correlated with higher activation in areas associated with mental model construction and knowledge integration (left inferior frontal gyrus, left superior parietal lobe, bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, bilateral hippocampus). Poorer comprehension showed greater activation in areas related to autobiographical memory retrieval (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus). More comprehensible passages elicited more activation in areas associated with linking different information types and establishing conceptual coherence. These findings have implications for teaching comprehension strategies and improving instructional text structure.

Timothy A. Keller, Robert A. Mason, Aliza E. Legg, Marcel Adam Just