title: Individual variability in location impacts orthographic selectivity in the "visual word form area".
abstract: Strong evidence exists for a key role of the human ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT) in reading, yet there have been conflicting reports about the specificity of this area in orthographic versus nonorthographic processing. We suggest that the inconsistencies in the literature can be explained by the method used to identify regions that respond to words. Here we provide evidence that the "visual word form area" (VWFA) shows word selectivity when identified at the individual subject level, but that intersubject variability in the location and size of the VWFA causes this selectivity to be washed out if defining the VWFA at the group level or based on coordinates from the literature. Our findings confirm the existence of a word-selective region in vOT while providing an explanation for why other studies have found a lack of word specificity in vOT.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, District of Columbia 20007, USA. lsg5@georgetown.edu
authors.forename: Laurie S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Glezer
authors.forename: Maximilian
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Riesenhuber
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011932:Reading; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult