The position of visual word forms in the anatomical and representational space of visual categories in...

Recent reviews emphasized the need for investigating the complexity of multiplesubareas of word selectivity and how this relates to selectivity for othervisual categories, at the individual level at a high spatial resolution (withoutnormalization or smoothing). To investigate this, both on the brain surface andin the representational space of the occipitotemporal cortex, we presented 19participants with images of 20 different categories during 7T fMRI. Thesecategories included several word-like conditions, and in addition cover many ofthe dimensions that have been suggested to define object space, such as animacyand real-world size. In the left hemisphere, we found three subareas of thevisual word form area (VWFA) and one extra subarea around the pFusface-selective area. We also observed several areas of selectivity to hands thatcould consistently guide the localization of word and face areas. No clearpredictive anatomical landmarks were found. Results of the right hemisphere wereless clear, in part due to weaker word selectivity. In the representationalspace, word selectivity stood out from other categories. It had multipleneighboring categories at a similar distance (e.g., faces, bodies, hands, cars),so no special relationship was found with, for example, faces. These resultsenable a consistent and reliable way to locate subareas of word selectivity andmay inspire future research into words in the representational space of theoccipitotemporal cortex.