Mirror-image discrimination in the literate brain: a causal role for the left occpitotemporal cortex

Nakamura, Kimihiro; Makuuchi, Michiru; Nakajima, Yasoichi

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00478

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Exactly as teachers have refined, at an adult age, how they process children faces (de Heering & Rossion, 2008), the Braille readers we tested here learnt to break mirror invariance compulsory for Braille letters years after they started to break mirror invariance for Latin letters. Even more strikingly, the current results also favor the idea that the cortical representations underlying this perceptual bias can be reshaped to the point of not leading to any brain competition between the old and the novel material of expertise, presumably to facilitate efficient processing of the novel script (see Dehaene et al, 2010;Pegado, Nakamura, Cohen, & Dehaene, 2011; but see Nakamura, Makuuchi et al, 2014; for a review, see Pegado, Nakamura et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

“…Third, it has been observed that the ability to break mirror invariance develops as a function of literacy, even if it is acquired at an adult age (Fernandes & Kolinsky, 2013;Kolinsky et al, 2011;Pegado, Comerlato et al, 2014). Fourth, both beginning child readers and adult fluent readers, but not preliterate children (Fernandes et al, 2016) or illiterate adults Nakamura, Makuuchi et al, 2014), break mirror invariance compulsorily and are therefore unable to ignore mirror-image differences even when this hinders performance (Dehaene et al, 2010;de Heering, Collignon, & Kolinsky, 2018;Fernandes et al, 2016;Pegado, Nakamura et al, 2014). In fact, only literates show a mirror cost when performing a speeded same-different orientation-independent comparison task, responding more slowly "same" to mirrored stimuli compared to strictly identical ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Braille readers break mirror invariance for both visual Braille and Latin letters

Heering

Kolinsky

2019

Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cet article publié par ELSEVIER provient du Dépôt institutionnel de l'Université Libre de Bruxelles, DIfusion http://difusion.ulb.ac.be. Il n'est accessible qu'aux membres de la communauté universitaire de l'ULB sur le réseau sécurisé de l'ULB. Tout utilisateur autorisé peut lire, télécharger ou reproduire cet article à des fins d'usage privé ou à des fins non commerciales d'enseignement ou de recherche scientifique. Il ne peut être atteint à l'intégrité de l'article, et les noms des auteurs et de l'éditeur doivent être conservés. Tout téléchargement systématique des articles publiés par ELSEVIER mis à disposition dans DI-fusion est interdit. This article published by ELSEVIER comes from the Institutional repository of Université Libre de Bruxelles, DI-fusion http://difusion.ulb.ac.be. It is accessible only to the members of the university community of ULB on the ULB secure network. Any authorized user may read, download or reproduce this article for private usage, or for non commercial research or educational purposes. The integrity of the article and identification of the author and copyright owner must be preserved. Systematic downloading of articles published by ELSEVIER that are available in DI-fusion is not permitted.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Braille readers break mirror invariance for both visual Braille and Latin letters

Heering

Kolinsky

2019

Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Mirror letter stimuli are specially processed by the left hemisphere (Pegado et al, 2011;Nakamura et al, 2014), and left hemisphere lesions sometimes affect reading and writing of mirror letters (Schott, 2007). LLF-damaged subjects therefore may have had particular difficulty tuning attention to the letter-shaped stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Necessary Contributions of Human Frontal Lobe Subregions to Reward Learning in a Dynamic, Multidimensional Environment

Vaidya

Fellows

2016

J. Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Real-world decisions are typically made between options that vary along multiple dimensions, requiring prioritization of the important dimensions to support optimal choice. Learning in this setting depends on attributing decision outcomes to the dimensions with predictive relevance rather than to dimensions that are irrelevant and nonpredictive. This attribution problem is computationally challenging, and likely requires an interplay between selective attention and reward learning. Both these processes have been separately linked to the prefrontal cortex, but little is known about how they combine to support learning the reward value of multidimensional stimuli. Here, we examined the necessary contributions of frontal lobe subregions in attributing feedback to relevant and irrelevant dimensions on a trial-by-trial basis in humans. Patients with focal frontal lobe damage completed a demanding reward learning task where options varied on three dimensions, only one of which predicted reward. Participants with left lateral frontal lobe damage attributed rewards to irrelevant dimensions, rather than the relevant dimension. Damage to the ventromedial frontal lobe also impaired learning about the relevant dimension, but did not increase reward attribution to irrelevant dimensions. The results argue for distinct roles for these two regions in learning the value of multidimensional decision options under dynamic conditions, with the lateral frontal lobe required for selecting the relevant dimension to associate with reward, and the ventromedial frontal lobe required to learn the reward association itself.

show abstract

“…However, the neurophysiological mirror-generalization process may lead this initial information on orientation being lost during memory transfer along the visual ventral occipito-temporal pathway (see [47] for more information about this pathway). As a result, there is a short period of time during which children master the shape of the characters but not their left-right orientation.…”

Section: A Theory Of Character Reversal In Writing From Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

Fischer

Luxembourger

2018

Education Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reversing characters (digits and letters) when writing, and complete mirror writing, raise one of the oldest and most mysterious questions in developmental and educational psychology: Why do five-year-old children write symbols (e.g., ∃ for E) they have neither learnt nor seen? Attempts to draw up a complete explanatory theory of character reversal in writings by typically developing children were long hindered by the existence of a seemingly satisfactory explanation (left-hand writing), the failure to bring together research in neuropsychology and educational psychology, and the failure to consider the shape and structure of the characters. The present paper remedies this situation by describing a new, comprehensive theory based on recent neuropsychological findings and extensive empirical observations. The theory assumes that a character's orientation, detected in the early visual processing area, is deleted (or made inaccessible) by the mirror generalization process during transfer to memory. Consequently, there is a period, usually around age five, during which children have representations of the characters' shapes but not their orientations. Hence, when asked to write a character, children have to improvise its orientation, and the orientation they choose (implicitly, non-consciously) is often derived from the writing direction in their culture. Introduction: Historical BackgroundCharacter reversal, which results in left-right reversed characters (letters and digits) that appear normal when read in a mirror, is a major component of mirror writing. In the scientific literature, it was first described in 1878 by Buchwald, who reported several cases of character reversal in writing by patients with brain lesions and by healthy individuals, most notably children, nearly all of whom wrote with their left hand [1]. This pioneering study launched a new field of research and triggered numerous reports of mirror writing by both pathological and non-pathological individuals. Less felicitously, Buchwald's implicit suggestion that mirror writing was restricted to people who wrote with their left hand, whether naturally or deliberately, would cloud research for over a century.Erlenmeyer immediately included Buchwald's paper in his book on "Writing", quoting at length the paragraph describing children who mirror wrote with their left hand, but, when alerted to the incorrectness of their writing, wrote correctly with their right hand [2]. Furthermore, by suggesting "abductive left-hand writing" (linkshändige Abductionsschrift in German) as a more appropriate name for "mirror writing", Erlenmeyer reduced mirror writing to a mechanistic result of writing with the left hand: Characters and words are reversed when an individual writes abductively (outwards from the body midline) with the left hand.

show abstract

Mirror-image discrimination in the literate brain: a causal role for the left occpitotemporal cortex

Cited by 12 publications

References 45 publications

Braille readers break mirror invariance for both visual Braille and Latin letters

Braille readers break mirror invariance for both visual Braille and Latin letters

Necessary Contributions of Human Frontal Lobe Subregions to Reward Learning in a Dynamic, Multidimensional Environment

A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About