Faculty Collaboration Database

Tuning of the human left fusiform gyrus to sublexical orthographic structure. Neuroimage 2006 Nov 01;33(2):739-48

Date

09/08/2006

Pubmed ID

16956773

Pubmed Central ID

PMC1634933

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.06.053

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-33749263849 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   237 Citations

Abstract

Neuropsychological and neurophysiological evidence point to a role for the left fusiform gyrus in visual word recognition, but the specific nature of this role remains a topic of debate. The aim of this study was to measure the sensitivity of this region to sublexical orthographic structure. We measured blood oxygenation (BOLD) changes in the brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging while fluent readers of English viewed meaningless letter strings. The stimuli varied systematically in their approximation to English orthography, as measured by the probability of occurrence of letters and sequential letter pairs (bigrams) comprising the string. A whole-brain analysis showed a single region in the lateral left fusiform gyrus where BOLD signal increased with letter sequence probability; no other brain region showed this response pattern. The results suggest tuning of this cortical area to letter probabilities as a result of perceptual experience and provide a possible neural correlate for the 'word superiority effect' observed in letter perception research.

Author List

Binder JR, Medler DA, Westbury CF, Liebenthal E, Buchanan L

Author

Jeffrey R. Binder MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adult
Brain Mapping
Cerebrovascular Circulation
Educational Status
Female
Functional Laterality
Gyrus Cinguli
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Oxygen
Reference Values