RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Individual Variability in Location Impacts Orthographic Selectivity in the “Visual Word Form Area”
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 11221
OP 11226
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5002-12.2013
VO 33
IS 27
A1 Laurie S. Glezer
A1 Maximilian Riesenhuber
YR 2013
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/27/11221.abstract
AB 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.