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. 2006 Nov 1;33(2):739-48.
doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.06.053. Epub 2006 Sep 7.

Tuning of the human left fusiform gyrus to sublexical orthographic structure

Jeffrey R Binder  1 , David A Medler, Chris F Westbury, Einat Liebenthal, Lori Buchanan
Affiliations

Tuning of the human left fusiform gyrus to sublexical orthographic structure

Jeffrey R Binder et al. Neuroimage. .

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.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Areas activated in common across all conditions (p < 0.05, corrected). Axial sections through stereotaxic space are shown at 10-mm intervals. The left side of the brain is on the reader's left. Green lines indicate the coronal and sagittal planes through the stereotaxic origin. Numbers indicate slice location on the x axis.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Brain regions showing activation correlated with orthographic familiarity (p<0.05, corrected) before (A) and after (B) accounting for effects of variation in response time. Sections are shown in coronal (top row) and axial (bottom row) orientations. Formatting as in Fig. 1.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Mean percent change in BOLD signal in the lateral left fusiform gyrus plotted against the average MPBF for each condition.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Mean proportion correct in the psychophysical study as a function of average MPBF for each condition.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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