scholarly journals Learning to Read an Alphabet of Human Faces Produces Left-lateralized Training Effects in the Fusiform Gyrus

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 896-913 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle W. Moore ◽  
Corrine Durisko ◽  
Charles A. Perfetti ◽  
Julie A. Fiez
Keyword(s):  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Reading Performance ◽  
Fusiform Gyrus ◽  
Orthographic Processing ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Visual Word Form Area ◽  
The Right ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
Language Areas

Numerous functional neuroimaging studies have shown that most orthographic stimuli, such as printed English words, produce a left-lateralized response within the fusiform gyrus (FG) at a characteristic location termed the visual word form area (VWFA). We developed an experimental alphabet (FaceFont) comprising 35 face–phoneme pairs to disentangle phonological and perceptual influences on the lateralization of orthographic processing within the FG. Using functional imaging, we found that a region in the vicinity of the VWFA responded to FaceFont words more strongly in trained versus untrained participants, whereas no differences were observed in the right FG. The trained response magnitudes in the left FG region correlated with behavioral reading performance, providing strong evidence that the neural tissue recruited by training supported the newly acquired reading skill. These results indicate that the left lateralization of the orthographic processing is not restricted to stimuli with particular visual-perceptual features. Instead, lateralization may occur because the anatomical projections in the vicinity of the VWFA provide a unique interconnection between the visual system and left-lateralized language areas involved in the representation of speech.

scholarly journals The visual word form area: a prelexical representation of visual words in the fusiform gyrus

Neuroreport ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanislas Dehaene ◽  
Gurvan Le Clec’H ◽  
Jean-Baptiste Poline ◽  
Denis Le Bihan ◽  
Laurent Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Visual Word ◽  
Fusiform Gyrus ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Visual Words ◽  
Visual Word Form Area

Learning to read without a left occipital lobe: Right-hemispheric shift of visual word form area

2004 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 890-894 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Cohen ◽  
Stéphane Lehéricy ◽  
Carole Henry ◽  
Marie Bourgeois ◽  
Christine Larroque ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Occipital Lobe ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Visual Word Form Area

scholarly journals Considering unique, shared, and dominant brain activation in the Visual Word Form Area and Lateral Occipital Cortex: A comparison of separate and combined word reading and picture naming

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Neudorf ◽  
Layla Gould ◽  
Marla J. S. Mickleborough ◽  
Chelsea Ekstrand ◽  
Ron Borowsky
Keyword(s):  
Picture Naming ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Visual Complexity ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Lateral Occipital Complex ◽  
Visual Word Form Area ◽  
The Right ◽  
Lateral Occipital Cortex

Identifying printed words and pictures concurrently is ubiquitous in daily tasks, and so it is important to consider the extent to which reading words and naming pictures may share a cognitive-neurophysiological functional architecture. Two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments examined whether reading along the left ventral occipitotemporal region (vOT; often referred to as a visual word form area, VWFA) has activation that is overlapping with referent pictures (i.e., both conditions significant and shared, or with one significantly more dominant) or unique (i.e., one condition significant, the other not), and whether picture naming along the right lateral occipital complex (LOC) has overlapping or unique activation relative to referent words. Experiment 1 used familiar regular and exception words (to force lexical reading) and their corresponding pictures in separate naming blocks, and showed dominant activation for pictures in the LOC, and shared activation in the VWFA for exception words and their corresponding pictures (regular words did not elicit significant VWFA activation). Experiment 2 controlled for visual complexity by superimposing the words and pictures and instructing participants to either name the word or the picture, and showed primarily shared activation in the VWFA and LOC regions for both word reading and picture naming, with some dominant activation for pictures in the LOC. Overall, these results highlight the importance of including exception words to force lexical reading when comparing to picture naming, and the significant shared activation in VWFA and LOC serves to challenge specialized models of reading or picture naming.

Prosopagnosia seizure semiology in a 10-year-old boy: a functional neuroimaging study

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. e237228
Author(s):  
Jack Lam ◽  
Jeremy T Moreau ◽  
Jen-Kai Chen ◽  
Steffen Albrecht ◽  
Christine Saint-Martin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Paediatric Patient ◽  
Functional Mri ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Fusiform Gyrus ◽  
Posterior Quadrant ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Neuroimaging Study ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

We illustrate a case of post-traumatic recurrent transient prosopagnosia in a paediatric patient with a right posterior inferior temporal gyrus haemorrhage seen on imaging and interictal electroencephalogram abnormalities in the right posterior quadrant. Face recognition area mapping with magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional MRI (fMRI) was performed to clarify the relationship between the lesion and his prosopagnosia, which showed activation of the right fusiform gyrus that colocalised with the lesion. Lesions adjacent to the right fusiform gyrus can result in seizures presenting as transient prosopagnosia. MEG and fMRI can help to attribute this unique semiology to the lesion.

High-level Integrative Networks: A Resting-state fMRI Investigation of Reading and Spelling

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (7) ◽  
pp. 961-977 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gali Ellenblum ◽  
Jeremy J. Purcell ◽  
Xiaowei Song ◽  
Brenda Rapp
Keyword(s):  
Resting State ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Orthographic Processing ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Visual Word Form Area ◽  
Reference Networks ◽  
High Level ◽  
Reading And Spelling ◽  
Processing Networks

Orthographic processing skills (reading and spelling) are evolutionarily recent and mastered late in development, providing an opportunity to investigate how the properties of the neural networks supporting skills of this type compare to those supporting evolutionarily older, well-established “reference” networks. Although there has been extensive research using task-based fMRI to study the neural substrates of reading, there has been very little using resting-state fMRI to examine the properties of orthographic networks. In this investigation using resting-state fMRI, we compare the within-network and across-network coherence properties of reading and spelling networks directly to these properties of reference networks, and we also compare the network properties of the key node of the orthographic networks—the visual word form area—to those of the other nodes of the orthographic and reference networks. Consistent with previous results, we find that orthographic processing networks do not exhibit certain basic network coherence properties displayed by other networks. However, we identify novel distinctive properties of the orthographic processing networks and establish that the visual word form area has unusually high levels of connectivity with a broad range of brain areas. These characteristics form the basis of our proposal that orthographic networks represent a class of “high-level integrative networks” with distinctive properties that allow them to recruit and integrate multiple, lower level processes.

scholarly journals The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 293-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce D. McCandliss ◽  
Laurent Cohen ◽  
Stanislas Dehaene
Keyword(s):  
Visual Word ◽  
Fusiform Gyrus ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Visual Word Form Area

scholarly journals The beauty of language structure: a single-case fMRI study of palindrome creation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Leon-Cabrera ◽  
Antoni Guillamon ◽  
David Cucurell Vega ◽  
Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells
Keyword(s):  
Single Case ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Visual Word Form Area ◽  
Frontopolar Cortex ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Palindromic Structure ◽  
Challenging Tasks ◽  
Partial Overlap ◽  
The Right

Humans seem to be inherently driven to engage in wordplay. An example is the creation of palindromes –words, sentences, or even paragraphs that read the same backward and forward. This type of activity can be framed as a curiosity-driven behavior, in which individuals sacrifice finite resources, such as their time, to seek information that serves no direct purpose and in the absence of external rewards. Here, we present a single-case fMRI study of an experienced palindrome creator, who was scanned while he was immersed in generating palindromic sentences with different levels of difficulty. Blocks of palindrome creation were alternated with periods of resting and with the performance of a simple working memory (WM) task that served as control conditions. Relative to resting, palindrome creation recruited frontal domain-specific language networks and fronto-parietal domain-general networks. The comparison with the WM task evidenced a partial overlap with the multiple-demand cortex (MDC), which participates in solving different cognitively challenging tasks that require attention and cognitive control. Further, the implication of the inferior temporal gyrus (BA 37), extending ventrally to occipito-temporal regions (including the visual word form area), suggested the use of visual imagery and word form visualization to achieve this challenging task. Notably, greater difficulty during palindrome creation (difficult minus easy blocks) differentially activated the right frontopolar cortex (BA 10), a region that was also linked to successful palindrome resolution. The latter is in line with exploratory behavior to seek out information, in this case, with the exploration of new but interdependent linguistic segments within a complex internal model (i.e., a palindromic structure). These brain substrates also bear resemblance with those sustaining hard logical reasoning, altogether interestingly pointing to a commonplace for curiosity in discovering new and complex relations.

Encoding in the Visual Word Form Area: An fMRI Adaptation Study of Words versus Handwriting

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1649-1661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason J. S. Barton ◽  
Christopher J. Fox ◽  
Alla Sekunova ◽  
Giuseppe Iaria
Keyword(s):  
Text Processing ◽  
Handwriting Recognition ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Visual Word Form Area ◽  
Repetition Suppression ◽  
The Right ◽  
Fmri Adaptation ◽  
Left Middle Temporal Gyrus

Written texts are not just words but complex multidimensional stimuli, including aspects such as case, font, and handwriting style, for example. Neuropsychological reports suggest that left fusiform lesions can impair the reading of text for word (lexical) content, being associated with alexia, whereas right-sided lesions may impair handwriting recognition. We used fMRI adaptation in 13 healthy participants to determine if repetition–suppression occurred for words but not handwriting in the left visual word form area (VWFA) and the reverse in the right fusiform gyrus. Contrary to these expectations, we found adaptation for handwriting but not for words in both the left VWFA and the right VWFA homologue. A trend to adaptation for words but not handwriting was seen only in the left middle temporal gyrus. An analysis of anterior and posterior subdivisions of the left VWFA also failed to show any adaptation for words. We conclude that the right and the left fusiform gyri show similar patterns of adaptation for handwriting, consistent with a predominantly perceptual contribution to text processing.

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