ABSTRACT
In everyday language, writing refers to many different things: organising ideas in a text, taking notes, spelling words we have heard and, of course, producing the gestures required for fast and accurate shaping of a graphic trace. It is precisely this last, motor level we refer to when we use the word writing in this chapter. Handwriting is among the finest gestures humans can perform. All the involved articulations and muscles of the hand and arm are coordinated to communicate information, based on an arbitrary symbolic system. We start by presenting how motor control of handwriting is organised during development. We then review brain imaging and behavioral experiments that shed light on the way the brain controls handwriting. We discuss the idea, originally developed by the 19th-century neurologist Sigmund Exner, of a brain centre dedicated to writing. Finally, we focus on the perception of graphic traces, with data showing that the motor system ‘resonates’ with the visual system when written characters are read. We close this chapter by describing a recent study on the advantage of learning a second language through writing.
