title: Similar ventral occipito-temporal cortex activations in literate and illiterate adults during the Chinese character matching task: an fMRI study.
abstract: Visual word expertise is typically associated with enhanced ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex activation in response to written words. Previous study utilized a passive viewing task and found that vOT response to written words was significantly stronger in literate compared to the illiterate subjects. However, recent neuroimaging findings have suggested that vOT response properties are highly dependent upon the task demand. Thus, it is unknown whether literate adults would show stronger vOT response to written words compared to illiterate adults during other cognitive tasks, such as perceptual matching. We addressed this issue by comparing vOT activations between literate and illiterate adults during a Chinese character and simple figure matching task. Unlike passive viewing, a perceptual matching task requires active shape comparison, therefore minimizing automatic word processing bias. We found that although the literate group performed better at Chinese character matching task, the two subject groups showed similar strong vOT responses during this task. Overall, the findings indicate that the vOT response to written words is not affected by expertise during a perceptual matching task, suggesting that the association between visual word expertise and vOT response may depend on the task demand.
authors.affiliation: The Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan.
authors.forename: Geqi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: School of Computer Science and Technology, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Xiujun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Tianyi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: The Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan; College of Computer Science and Technology, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: The Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan.
authors.forename: Jiajia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: The Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Okayama, Japan. Electronic address: wu@mech.okayama-u.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Jinglong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Liaoning, China. Electronic address: guoqy@sj-hospital.org.
authors.forename: Qiyong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Guo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005556:Form Perception; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008875:Middle Aged; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior
keywords: Chinese characters; Expertise; Illiterate; Matching task; Ventral occipito-temporal cortex; fMRI