Converging evidence for the role of occipital regions in orthographic processing: a case of developmental surface dyslexia

Recently, there have been several reports focusing on the neural basis for word recognition. Two different views have emerged: one emphasizing the role of the left angular gyrus in recognizing printed words, and the second view suggesting that visual word processing activates the left extrastriate cortex. This paper describes the case of EBON, a 14-year-old girl with an extensive early (most likely congenital) brain lesion in the left occipital lobe. She demonstrates a clear pattern of developmental surface dyslexia in that she is more successful at reading and spelling regular words than irregular words and makes frequent regularization errors. Thus, EBON is the first case reported with the potential to establish converging evidence for the role of extrastriate regions in the left hemisphere in the acquisition of orthographic representations.