Both mOTS-words and pOTS-words prefer emoji stimuli over text stimuli during a lexical judgment task

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• The visual word form area (OTS-words) in the occipitotemporal sulcus is vital for reading and prefers text.
• It's hypothesized that this text preference stems from lexical processing, the recognition of words.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the text preference of OTS-words is driven by lexical processing.
• To explore the distinct roles of middle (mOTS-words) and posterior (pOTS-words) subregions within the OTS-words.

Main Methods:

• Three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments were conducted with 15 participants.
• Experiments involved contrasting text with other visual stimuli, using fMRI adaptation with compound words presented as text or emojis, and performing lexical or color judgment tasks.

Main Results:

• Posterior OTS-words (pOTS-words) showed fMRI adaptation for compound words in both text and emoji formats.
• Middle OTS-words (mOTS-words) demonstrated higher responses during lexical judgment tasks and showed a task-stimulus interaction.
• Multivariate analyses indicated pOTS-words responses encode stimulus, while mOTS-words responses encode both stimulus and task.

Conclusions:

• The function of OTS-words subregions extends beyond visual text processing.
• These brain regions are flexibly recruited for assigning semantic meaning to diverse visual inputs.