ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2017
Privileged Functional Connectivity between the Visual Word Form Area and the Language System.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 77 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
77 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 143 citations in OpenAlex.
- Is human face recognition lateralized to the right hemisphere due to neural competition with left-lateralized visual word recognition? A critical review.Brain structure & function · 2022Pooled it
- Simultaneous Cortical Responses to Multiple Written Words.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Structure and function of word laterality in early childhood.Behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Context-dependent reconfiguration of functional connectivity in posterior (VWFA-1) and anterior (VWFA-2) visual word form area under attentional and linguistic demands.Behavioral and brain functions : BBF · 2026Article
- Literacy acquisition and functional connectivity drive the emergence and continued development of the VWFA.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Pure agraphia following a focal lesion in exner's area: a case study supporting the dual-route and network models of writing.BMC neurology · 2026Article
- The reading brain - Transforming vision into language.Progress in neurobiology · 2026Review
- Simultaneous cortical responses to multiple written words.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex.Cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- Functional Connectivity Fingerprints of Emerging Reading Skill in the First Months of Schooling.Developmental science · 2026Article
- The Emergence of Topography and Hemispheric Lateralization in High-Level Vision.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Review
- The ventral visual stream for reading converges on the transmodal language network.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Atypical Scene-Selectivity in the Retrosplenial Complex in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Article
- Phonological Representations of Auditory and Visual Speech in the Occipito-temporal Cortex and Beyond.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Hippocampal and cortical oscillatory dynamics reflect semantic processing and predict behavioural performance.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- Individual variation in the functional lateralization of human ventral temporal cortex: Local competition and long-range coupling.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Individual variation in the functional lateralization of human ventral temporal cortex: Local competition and long-range coupling.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Revealing the co-existence of written and spoken language coding neural populations in the visual word form area.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Exploring the links among brain iron accumulation, cognitive performance, and dietary intake in older adults: A longitudinal MRI study.Neurobiology of aging · 2025Article
- Intracerebral Electrical Stimulation of the Left Occipito-Temporal Cortex Induces Pure Alexia.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
17 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The visual word form area (VWFA) is a region in the left occipitotemporal sulcus of literate individuals that is purportedly specialized for visual word recognition. However, there is considerable controversy about its functional specificity and connectivity, with some arguing that it serves as a domain-general, rather than word-specific, visual processor. The VWFA is a critical region for testing hypotheses about the nature of cortical organization, because it is known to develop only through experience (i.e., reading acquisition), and widespread literacy is too recent to have influenced genetic determinants of brain organization. Using a combination of advanced fMRI analysis techniques, including individual functional localization, multivoxel pattern analysis, and high-resolution resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) analyses, with data from 33 healthy adult human participants, we demonstrate that (1) the VWFA can discriminate words from nonword letter strings (pseudowords); (2) the VWFA has preferential RSFC with Wernicke's area and other core regions of the language system; and (3) the strength of the RSFC between the VWFA and Wernicke's area predicts performance on a semantic classification task with words but not other categories of visual stimuli. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the VWFA is specialized for lexical processing of real words because of its functional connectivity with Wernicke's area.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.