Position sensitivity in the visual word form area

摘要

Reading is a complex skill that requires the brain to process various kinds of information, including analysis of the visual form, or shape, of letters and words. Visual form analysis occurs in a region of the brain [the visual word form area (VWFA)] that is thought to be oblivious to the location of a word in the visual field. However, this brain region is surrounded by related areas that are known to be organized as visual field maps. Our experiments show that the VWFA does in fact encode information about the location of a word in visual space, pointing to unique ways of understanding how brain circuitry underlies the process of reading.