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Related Experiment Videos

Attention to single letters activates left extrastriate cortex.

D L Flowers1, K Jones, K Noble

  • 1Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA.

Neuroimage
|March 10, 2004
PubMed
Summary

Researchers identified a specific brain area for letter recognition in the left extrastriate cortex. This finding may aid in the early identification of reading disabilities.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology

Background:

  • Brain imaging studies of reading often show activity in the left extrastriate cortex.
  • Reading involves semantic, phonological, and orthographic processing, influenced by reading skill.
  • Single letter processing is largely automatized and less affected by later linguistic experience than word processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To isolate brain activity related to single letter recognition.
  • To differentiate letter-specific processing from processing of other visual features like symbols and colors.
  • To identify a potential neural marker for early reading disability.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan skilled readers.

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  • Participants attended to different aspects (letters, symbols, colors) of identical stimuli in separate sessions.
  • Stimuli were designed to minimize word-level lexical processing.

    • Main Results:

    • Shared activation in the ventral extrastriate cortex for alphabetic and non-alphabetic features was observed.
    • A distinct, letter-specific area was identified in the left extrastriate cortex (Brodmann's Area 37).
    • This letter-specific area was located lateral to the visual word form area.

    Conclusions:

    • Cortical responses to letter recognition can be isolated from figural and color processing.
    • A specialized brain region for letter recognition was identified, distinct from word form areas.
    • This finding has practical implications for the early identification of reading disabilities.