title: Visual Experience Shapes Orthographic Representations in the Visual Word Form Area.
abstract: Current neurocognitive research suggests that the efficiency of visual word recognition rests on abstract memory representations of written letters and words stored in the visual word form area (VWFA) in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. These representations are assumed to be invariant to visual characteristics such as font and case. In the present functional MRI study, we tested this assumption by presenting written words and varying the case format of the initial letter of German nouns (which are always capitalized) as well as German adjectives and adverbs (both usually in lowercase). As evident from a Word Type × Case Format interaction, activation in the VWFA was greater to words presented in unfamiliar case formats relative to familiar case formats. Our results suggest that neural representations of written words in the VWFA are not fully abstract and still contain information about the visual format in which words are most frequently perceived.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg.
authors.forename: Heinz
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wimmer
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg philipp.ludersdorfer@sbg.ac.at.
authors.forename: Philipp
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ludersdorfer
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg.
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Richlan
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Salzburg Neuroscience Institute, Christian Doppler Clinic, Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kronbichler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology
keywords: fMRI; neuroimaging; orthographic representations; reading; visual word form area; visual word recognition