Abstract
The visual word form area (VWFA) is a region of left inferior occipitotemporal cortex that is critically involved in visual word recognition. Previous studies have investigated whether and how experience shapes the functional characteristics of VWFA by comparing neural response magnitude in response to words and nonwords. Conflicting results have been obtained, however, perhaps because response magnitude can be influenced by other factors such as attention. In this study, we measured neural activity in monozygotic twins, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. This allowed us to quantify differences in unique environmental contributions to neural activation evoked by words, pseudowords, consonant strings, and false fonts in the VWFA and striate cortex. The results demonstrate significantly greater effects of unique environment in the word and pseudoword conditions compared to the consonant string and false font conditions both in VWFA and in left striate cortex. These findings provide direct evidence for environmental contributions to the neural architecture for reading, and suggest that learning phonology and/or orthographic patterns plays the biggest role in shaping that architecture.
Highlights
The left lateral occipitotemporal cortex has been identified as a critical site for the visual processing of written words [1,2]
The same test for accuracy showed a significant difference between the conditions (F3.00, 93.05 = 14.074, p,0.0001, Greenhouse-Geisser corrected), and this difference was mainly driven by lower accuracy in the false fonts condition than the other conditions (A post-hoc contrast of False fonts (FF),NB showed F1,31 = 27.983, p,0.001)
We investigated how the environment influences the functional organization of the visual word form area (VWFA)
Summary
The left lateral occipitotemporal cortex has been identified as a critical site for the visual processing of written words [1,2]. Brain imaging experiments collectively demonstrate that the middle portion of the left occipitotemporal sulcus bordering the fusiform gyrus and the inferior temporal gyrus exhibits greater neural activation in response to written words compared to other control stimuli in a variety of tasks [for review see 3,4]. There is debate over whether this region is specialized for word forms, it is often referred to as the visual word form area (VWFA) [1]. The location of the VWFA is quite consistent across individuals and cultures [1,5,6], which suggests that some innate mechanisms play a role in the development of this neural architecture. It is unlikely that our brain has been genetically programmed, via natural selection, to process written words [3,7,8]
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