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The Journal of Neuroscience, May 31, 2006, 26(22):6052-6061; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0673-06.2006

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Cortical Sequence of Word Perception in Beginning Readers

Tiina Parviainen,¹ Päivi Helenius,¹ Elisa Poskiparta,² Pekka Niemi,^2,3 and Riitta Salmelin¹

¹Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, FI-02015 TKK Espoo, Finland, ²Department of Psychology, University of Turku, FI-20014 Turku, Finland, and ³Centre for Reading Research, University of Stavanger, N-4036 Stavanger, Norway

Correspondence should be addressed to Tiina Parviainen, Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 2200, FI-02015 TKK Espoo, Finland. Email: tiina{at}neuro.hut.fi

Efficient analysis of written words in normal reading is likely to reflect use of neural circuits formed by experience during childhood rather than an innate process. We investigated the cortical sequence of word perception in first-graders (7–8 years old), with special emphasis on occipitotemporal cortex in which, in adults, letter-string-sensitive responses are detected at 150 ms after stimulus. To identify neural activation that is sensitive to either the amount of basic visual features or specifically to letter strings, we recorded whole-head magnetoencephalography responses to words embedded in three different levels of noise and to symbol strings. As was shown previously in adults, activation reflecting stimulus nonspecific visual feature analysis was localized to occipital cortex in children. It was followed by letter-string-sensitive activation in the left occipitotemporal cortex and, subsequently, in the temporal cortex. These processing stages were correlated in timing and activation strength. Compared with adults, however, the timing of activation was clearly delayed in children, and the delay was progressively increased from occipital to occipitotemporal and further to temporal areas. This finding is likely to reflect increasing immaturity of the underlying neural generators when advancing from low-level visual analysis to higher-order areas involved in written word perception. When a salient occipitotemporal letter-string-sensitive activation was detected (10 of 18 children), its strength was correlated with phonological skills, in line with the known relevance of phonological awareness in reading acquisition.

Key words: children; magnetoencephalography; neuroimaging; occipitotemporal cortex; reading; visual system

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Received Sept. 12, 2005; revised April 11, 2006; accepted April 17, 2006.

Correspondence should be addressed to Tiina Parviainen, Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 2200, FI-02015 TKK Espoo, Finland. Email: tiina{at}neuro.hut.fi

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