HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Devlin, J. T. Articles by Matthews, P. M. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Devlin, J. T. Articles by Matthews, P. M.

The Role of the Posterior Fusiform Gyrus in Reading

¹ University of Oxford, UK, ² Lehigh University, UK

Reprint requests should be sent to Joseph T. Devlin, FMRIB Centre, Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK, or via e-mail: devlin{at}fmrib.ox.ac.uk.

Studies of skilled reading [Price, C. J., & Mechelli, A. Reading and reading disturbance. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15, 231–238, 2005], its acquisition in children [Shaywitz, B. A., Shaywitz, S. E., Pugh, K. R., Mencl, W. E., Fulbright, R. K., Skudlarski, P., et al. Disruption of posterior brain systems for reading in children with developmental dyslexia. Biological Psychiatry, 52, 101–110, 2002; Turkeltaub, P. E., Gareau, L., Flowers, D. L., Zeffiro, T. A., & Eden, G. F. Development of neural mechanisms for reading. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 767–773, 2003], and its impairment in patients with pure alexia [Leff, A. P., Crewes, H., Plant, G. T., Scott, S. K., Kennard, C., & Wise, R. J. The functional anatomy of single word reading in patients with hemianopic and pure alexia. Brain, 124, 510–521, 2001] all highlight the importance of the left posterior fusiform cortex in visual word recognition. We used visual masked priming and functional magnetic resonance imaging to elucidate the specific functional contribution of this region to reading and found that (1) unlike words, repetition of pseudowords ("solst–solst") did not produce a neural priming effect in this region, (2) orthographically related words such as "corner–corn" did produce a neural priming effect, but (3) this orthographic priming effect was reduced when prime–target pairs were semantically related ("teacher–teach"). These findings conflict with the notion of stored visual word forms and instead suggest that this region acts as an interface between visual form information and higher order stimulus properties such as its associated sound and meaning. More importantly, this function is not specific to reading but is also engaged when processing any meaningful visual stimulus.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. A. Church, R. S. Coalson, H. M. Lugar, S. E. Petersen, and B. L. Schlaggar A Developmental fMRI Study of Reading and Repetition Reveals Changes in Phonological and Visual Mechanisms Over Age Cereb Cortex, September 1, 2008; 18(9): 2054 - 2065. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				Q. Cai, M. Lavidor, M. Brysbaert, Y. Paulignan, and T. A. Nazir Cerebral lateralization of frontal lobe language processes and lateralization of the posterior visual word processing system. J. Cogn. Neurosci., April 1, 2008; 20(4): 672 - 681. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. Bick, G. Goelman, and R. Frost Neural correlates of morphological processes in hebrew. J. Cogn. Neurosci., March 1, 2008; 20(3): 406 - 420. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. Kronbichler, J. Bergmann, F. Hutzler, W. Staffen, A. Mair, G. Ladurner, and H. Wimmer Taxi vs. taksi: on orthographic word recognition in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. J. Cogn. Neurosci., October 1, 2007; 19(10): 1584 - 1594. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				G. Xue and R. A. Poldrack The neural substrates of visual perceptual learning of words: implications for the visual word form area hypothesis. J. Cogn. Neurosci., October 1, 2007; 19(10): 1643 - 1655. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. Bozic, W. D. Marslen-Wilson, E. A. Stamatakis, M. H. Davis, and L. K. Tyler Differentiating morphology, form, and meaning: neural correlates of morphological complexity. J. Cogn. Neurosci., September 1, 2007; 19(9): 1464 - 1475. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. I. Baker, J. Liu, L. L. Wald, K. K. Kwong, T. Benner, and N. Kanwisher Visual word processing and experiential origins of functional selectivity in human extrastriate cortex PNAS, May 22, 2007; 104(21): 9087 - 9092. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]