Piecemeal recruitment of left-lateralized brain areas during reading: A spatio-functional account

Reading the reading brain: A new meta-analysis of functional imaging data on reading

“…In Levy et al (2008), pseudoword reading yielded greater activation in a left parietal region close to our pseudoword-specific cluster in the same region, and in the left occipito-temporal area, in agreement with our findings. Seghier et al (2008) reported a negative correlation between pseudoword reading performance and activation in a network involving the left posterior occipitotemporal region and bilateral intraparietal cortex, suggesting that an ineffective pseudoword reading strategy would increase the processing load on such areas.…”

“…This finding was confirmed in Carreiras, Riba, Vergara, Heldmann, and Münte (2009), where activation in frontal regions (specifically, left pre/SMA and inferior frontal gyrus/insula bilaterally) was negatively correlated with word frequency for a lexical decision task. In Levy et al (2008) a precentral gyrus focus close to our left frontal operculum cluster was activated for the comparison pseudowords > words, which contributes to a difficulty effect (as acknowledged in this particular study, too, as pseudowords are the type of stimulus involving the greatest processing load). Also Kronbichler et al (2009) reported foci in the inferior frontal gyri and left precentral gyrus for pseudoword (letter-deviant versions of real words) reading as opposed to word reading.…”

“…The authors also reported on positive correlations with word frequency and imageability in the angular gyrus and precuneus/posterior cingulated cortex bilaterally, suggesting a semantic role for these areas that fits well with the results of our meta-analysis. The involvement in semantic processing of these regions has also been advanced in Levy et al (2008), where the words > pseudowords comparison identified a focus of activation in the bilateral inferior parietal lobule, close to our word-related left angular cluster, and in Carreiras et al (2009), where greater activation for high-frequency words versus low frequency words in a lexical decision task was found in the precuneus.…”

Specialization for written words over objects in the visual cortex

“…The VWFA in the fusiform region displays several high-level features specifically associated with reading, such as invariance for case or font (Dehaene et al, 2001;Binder et al, 2006;Vinckier et al, 2007;Levy et al, 2008;Glezer et al, 2009;Qiao et al, 2010). However, words traverse all stages of the visual system.…”

Alpha-band suppression in the visual word form area as a functional bottleneck to consciousness

“…Gaillard et al, 2009). Importantly, using singlewords for probing consciousness can be particularly suitable in the case of partial consciousness due to the graded organization of words from partial (letters) to full (whole word) processing (Selfridge, 1959;McClelland and Rumelhart, 1981) which is mapped onto separate localized functional cerebral clusters (Levy et al, 2008;Mainy et al, 2008;Vidal et al, 2012). Namely, the two perceptual levels involved in word reading (i.e.…”