ArticlePLoS biology2018
The emergence of the visual word form: Longitudinal evolution of category-specific ventral visual areas during reading acquisition.
Article in PLoS biology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 153 papers, 2 of them syntheses 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.
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Who cites it
153 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 379 citations in OpenAlex.
- A meta-analysis of letter-sound integration: Assimilation and accommodation in the superior temporal gyrus.Human brain mapping · 2024Pooled it
- 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
- Reading instruction causes changes in category-selective visual cortex.Brain research bulletin · 2024Trial
- Translating functional brain activity between humans and monkeys.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- When Development Falls out of Sync: A Developmental Timing Framework for Learning Disabilities.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Anatomy of the Visual Word Form Area in Dyslexia.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Active vision is linked to category selectivity in the individual brain.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Fusiform face area development correlates with development in higher-order social brain regions.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Experience-dependent cortical plasticity in response to formal schooling: Effects on networks for reading and mathematics.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Initial organization and progressive expansion of the math-responsive brain network during the first school years.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Literacy acquisition and functional connectivity drive the emergence and continued development of the VWFA.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Faces and Word Forms Can Coexist in the Right Ventro-occipital Temporal Cortex-Evidence from Left-Hemisphere Perinatal Stroke.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Visual Word Form Area demonstrates individual and task-agnostic consistency but inter-individual variability.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Protracted Functional and Structural Reorganization of Human Prefrontal Cortex Supports Lateralized Category Geometries.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026Review
- Home numeracy experiences are associated with number-related brain activity and connectivity in early childhood.NPJ science of learning · 2026Article
- Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex.Cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- The Emergence of Topography and Hemispheric Lateralization in High-Level Vision.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Review
- Functional Connectivity Fingerprints of Emerging Reading Skill in the First Months of Schooling.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Connecting the dots: Similar visual orthographic acquisition for Braille or line junctions.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
93 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
How does education affect cortical organization? All literate adults possess a region specialized for letter strings, the visual word form area (VWFA), within the mosaic of ventral regions involved in processing other visual categories such as objects, places, faces, or body parts. Therefore, the acquisition of literacy may induce a reorientation of cortical maps towards letters at the expense of other categories such as faces. To test this cortical recycling hypothesis, we studied how the visual cortex of individual children changes during the first months of reading acquisition. Ten 6-year-old children were scanned longitudinally 6 or 7 times with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and throughout the first year of school. Subjects were exposed to a variety of pictures (words, numbers, tools, houses, faces, and bodies) while performing an unrelated target-detection task. Behavioral assessment indicated a sharp rise in grapheme-phoneme knowledge and reading speed in the first trimester of school. Concurrently, voxels specific to written words and digits emerged at the VWFA location. The responses to other categories remained largely stable, although right-hemispheric face-related activity increased in proportion to reading scores. Retrospective examination of the VWFA voxels prior to reading acquisition showed that reading encroaches on voxels that are initially weakly specialized for tools and close to but distinct from those responsive to faces. Remarkably, those voxels appear to keep their initial category selectivity while acquiring an additional and stronger responsivity to words. We propose a revised model of the neuronal recycling process in which new visual categories invade weakly specified cortex while leaving previously stabilized cortical responses unchanged.
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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.