The visual word form area: a prelexical representation of... : NeuroReport (original) (raw)

Brain Imaging

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

Dehaene, Stanislas CA; Le Clec'H, Gurvan; Poline, Jean-Baptiste1; Le Bihan, Denis1; Cohen, Laurent2

Unité INSERM 334

1Unité de Neuro-Activation Fonctionnelle, IFR 49, Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, CEA/DSV, 4 Place du Général Leclerc, 91401 Orsay

2Institut de Neurologie, IFR 49, Hôpital de la Salpétrière, AP-HP, Paris, France

CACorresponding Author

Received 10 December 2001 accepted 3 January 2002

Abstract

Event-related fMRI was used to test the hypothesis that the visual word form area in the left fusiform gyrus holds a modality-specific and prelexical representation of visual words. Subjects were engaged in a repetition-detection task on pairs of words or pronounceable pseudo-words that could be written or spoken. The visual word form area responded only to written stimuli, not to spoken stimuli, independently of their semantic content. We propose that the occasional activation of the fusiform gyrus when listening to spoken words is due to the topdown recruitment of visual orthographic or object representations.