robust and task-independent spatial profile of the visual word form activation in fusiform cortex健壮和task-independent空间的视觉词形式在梭状回的激活皮层.pdfVIP

Robust and Task-Independent Spatial Profile of the Visual Word Form Activation in Fusiform Cortex 1. 1,2. 1 3 1 4 2 Lifei Ma , Yi Jiang , Jian’e Bai , Qiyong Gong , Haicheng Liu , Hsuan-Chih Chen , Sheng He *, Xuchu Weng1,5* 1 Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2 Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America, 3 Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, 4 Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong S.A.R., China, 5 Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China Abstract Written language represents a special category of visual information. There is strong evidence for the existence of a cortical region in ventral occipitotemporal cortex for processing the visual form of written words. However, due to inconsistent findings obtained with different tasks, the level of specialization and selectivity of this so called visual word form area (VWFA) remains debated. In this study, we examined category selectivity for Chinese characters, a non-alphabetic script, in native Chinese readers. In contrast to traditional approaches of examining response levels in a restricted predefined region of interest (ROI), a detailed distribution of the BOLD signal across the mid-fusiform cortical surface and the spatial patterns of responses to Chinese characters were obtained. Results show that a region tuned for Chinese characters could be consistently found in the lateral part of the left fusiform gyrus in Chinese readers, and this spatial pattern of selectivity for written