title: Direct intracranial, FMRI, and lesion evidence for the causal role of left inferotemporal cortex in reading.
abstract: Models of the "visual word form system" postulate that a left occipitotemporal region implements the automatic visual word recognition required for efficient reading. This theory was assessed in a patient in whom reading was explored with behavioral measures, fMRI, and intracranial local field potentials. Prior to surgery, when reading was normal, fMRI revealed a normal mosaic of ventral visual selectivity for words, faces, houses, and tools. Intracranial recordings demonstrated that the left occipitotemporal cortex responded with a short latency to conscious but also to subliminal words. Surgery removed a small portion of word-responsive occipitotemporal cortex overlapping with the word-specific fMRI activation. The patient developed a marked reading deficit, while recognition of other visual categories remained intact. Furthermore, in the post-surgery fMRI map of visual cortex, only word-specific activations disappeared. Altogether, these results provide direct evidence for the causal role of the left occipitotemporal cortex in the recognition of visual words.
authors.affiliation: INSERM, U562, CEA/DSV, IFR 49, Orsay, France.
authors.forename: Raphaël
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gaillard
authors.forename: Lionel
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Naccache
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pinel
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Clémenceau
authors.forename: Emmanuelle
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Volle
authors.forename: Dominique
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hasboun
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dupont
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baulac
authors.forename: Stanislas
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dehaene
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Adam
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cohen
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology* / Q000601:surgery; D004411:Dyslexia, Acquired / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading