A critical assumption underlying the use of functional localiser scans is that the voxels identified as the functional region-of-interest (fROI) are essentially the same as those activated by the main experimental manipulation. Intra-subject variability in the location of the fROI violates this assumption, reducing the sensitivity of the analysis and biasing the results. Here we investigated consistency and variability in fROIs in a set of 45 volunteers. They performed two functional localiser scans to identify word- and object-sensitive regions of ventral and lateral occipito-temporal cortex, respectively. In the main analyses, fROIs were defined as the category-selective voxels in each region and consistency was measured as the spatial overlap between scans. Consistency was greatest when minimally selective thresholds were used to define “active” voxels (p < 0.05 uncorrected), revealing that approximately 65% of the voxels were commonly activated by both scans. In contrast, highly selective thresholds (p < 10− 4 to 10− 6) yielded the lowest consistency values with less than 25% overlap of the voxels active in both scans. In other words, intra-subject variability was surprisingly high, with between one third and three quarters of the voxels in a given fROI not corresponding to those activated in the main task. This level of variability stands in striking contrast to the consistency seen in retinotopically-defined areas and has important implications for designing robust but efficient functional localiser scans.

Although interactivity is considered a fundamental principle of cognitive (and computational) models of reading, it has received far less attention in neural models of reading that instead focus on serial stages of feed-forward processing from visual input to orthographic processing to accessing the corresponding phonological and semantic information. In particular, the left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex is proposed to be the first stage where visual word recognition occurs prior to accessing nonvisual information such as semantics and phonology. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether there is evidence that activation in vOT is influenced top-down by the interaction of visual and nonvisual properties of the stimuli during visual word recognition tasks. Participants performed two different types of lexical decision tasks that focused on either visual or nonvisual properties of the word or word-like stimuli. The design allowed us to investigate how vOT activation during visual word recognition was influenced by a task change to the same stimuli and by a stimulus change during the same task. We found both stimulus- and task-driven modulation of vOT activation that can only be explained by top-down processing of nonvisual aspects of the task and stimuli. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that vOT acts as an interface linking visual form with nonvisual processing in both bottom up and top down directions. Such interactive processing at the neural level is in agreement with cognitive and computational models of reading but challenges some of the assumptions made by current neuro-anatomical models of reading.

Behavioral studies have demonstrated that learning to read and write affects the processing of spoken language. The present study investigates the neural mechanism underlying the emergence of such orthographic effects during speech processing. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to tease apart two competing hypotheses that consider this orthographic influence to be either a consequence of a change in the nature of the phonological representations during literacy acquisition or a consequence of online coactivation of the orthographic and phonological representations during speech processing. Participants performed an auditory lexical decision task in which the orthographic consistency of spoken words was manipulated and repetitive TMS was used to interfere with either phonological or orthographic processing by stimulating left supramarginal gyrus (SMG) or left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC), respectively. The advantage for consistently spelled words was removed only when the stimulation was delivered to SMG and not to vOTC, providing strong evidence that this effect arises at a phonological, rather than an orthographic, level. We propose a possible mechanistic explanation for the role of SMG in phonological processing and how this is affected by learning to read.