The myth of the visual word form area.

Full Abstract

Recent functional imaging studies have referred to a posterior region of the left midfusiform gyrus as the "visual word form area" (VWFA). We review the evidence for this claim and argue that neither the neuropsychological nor neuroimaging data are consistent with a cortical region specialized for visual word form representations. Specifically, there are no reported cases of pure alexia who have deficits limited to visual word form processing and damage limited to the left midfusiform. In addition, we present functional imaging data to demonstrate that the so-called VWFA is activated by normal subjects during tasks that do not engage visual word form processing such as naming colors, naming pictures, reading Braille, repeating auditory words, and making manual action responses to pictures of meaningless objects. If the midfusiform region has a single function that underlies all these tasks, then it does not correspond to visual word form processing. On the other hand, if the region participates in several functions as defined by its interactions with other cortical areas, then identifying the neural system sustaining visual word form representations requires identification of the set of regions involved. We conclude that there is no evidence that visual word form representations are subtended by a single patch of neuronal cortex and it is misleading to label the left midfusiform region as the visual word form area.

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Author information

Author/s: Price, Cathy J (CJ); Devlin, Joseph T (JT);

Affiliation: The Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK. c.price(-atsign-)fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Review

Journal: NeuroImage (Neuroimage), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Jul; vol 19 (issue 3) : pp 473-81

Dates: Created 2003/07/25; Completed 2003/09/09; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12880781, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Cognition - physiology
Form Perception - physiology
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Reading
Visual Cortex - anatomy & histology; physiology
Visual Perception - physiology

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