ArticleDevelopmental cognitive neuroscience2019
Word selectivity in high-level visual cortex and reading skill.
Article in Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 67 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
- Reading instruction causes changes in category-selective visual cortex.Brain research bulletin · 2024Trial
- Limb-selective regions in the lateral temporal lobe shrink from childhood to adulthood.Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- Literacy acquisition and functional connectivity drive the emergence and continued development of the VWFA.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Visual Word Form Area demonstrates individual and task-agnostic consistency but inter-individual variability.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Patterns of Language and Visuospatial Lateralisation and Cognitive Ability in Young Children Aged 4-7 Years.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Sulcal anatomy of ventral temporal cortex and reading development.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- From adolescence to adulthood: functional fingerprints of high-level visual cortex reveal differential development of visuospatial processing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Functional Specialization of the Visual Word Form Area During Word Reading: A Multimodal Neuroimaging Study.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- The balance between stability and plasticity of the visual word form area in dyslexia.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Individual variation in the functional lateralization of human ventral temporal cortex: Local competition and long-range coupling.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Visuospatial computations vary by category and stream and continue to develop in adolescence.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 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
- Development of the arcuate fasciculus is linked to learning gains in reading.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Demystifying visual word form area visual and nonvisual response properties with precision fMRI.iScience · 2024Article
- Towards a dynamic, comprehensive conceptualization of dyslexia.Annals of dyslexia · 2024Article
- Article
- Reading reshapes stimulus selectivity in the visual word form area.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The transition from vision to language: Distinct patterns of functional connectivity for subregions of the visual word form area.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- aXonica: A support package for MRI based Neuroimaging.Biotechnology notes (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Word-selective neural responses in human ventral occipito-temporal cortex (VOTC) emerge as children learn to read, creating a visual word form area (VWFA) in the literate brain. It has been suggested that the VWFA arises through competition between pre-existing selectivity for other stimulus categories, changing the topography of VOTC to support rapid word recognition. Here, we hypothesized that competition between words and objects would be resolved as children acquire reading skill. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined the relationship between responses to words and objects in VOTC in two ways. First, we defined the VWFA using a words > objects contrast and found that only skilled readers had a region that responded more to words than objects. Second, we defined the VWFA using a words > faces contrast and examined selectivity for words over objects in this region. We found that word selectivity strongly correlated with reading skill, suggesting reading skill-dependent tuning for words. Furthermore, we found that low word selectivity in struggling readers was not due to a lack of response to words, but to a high response to objects. Our results suggest that the fine-tuning of word-selective responses in VOTC is a critical component of skilled reading.
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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.