Orthographic and phonological processing in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex during Chinese word reading.

The left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (lvOT) has been consistently identified as a crucial structure in word reading, and its function varies across subregions. Nevertheless, the specific function of the lvOT and its subregions remains controversial because the obvious grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rules of alphabetic languages make it difficult to disentangle the contributions of orthography and phonology to neural activations. To explore information processing in lvOT subregions, the present study manipulated the orthography and phonology in a factorial design and used the fMRI rapid adaptation paradigm.

Category-specific and category-general neural codes of recognition memory in the ventral visual pathway.

Researchers have identified category-specific brain regions, such as the fusiform face area (FFA) and parahippocampal place area (PPA) in the ventral visual pathway, which respond preferentially to one particular category of visual objects. In addition to their category-specific role in visual object identification and categorization, regions in the ventral visual pathway play critical roles in recognition memory. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether the contributions of those brain regions to recognition memory are category-specific or category-general.

Individuals' preference on reading pathways influences the involvement of neural pathways in phonological learning.

Introduction: Existing behavioral and neuroimaging studies revealed inter-individual variability in the selection of the two phonological routes in word reading. However, it is not clear how individuals' preferred reading pathways/strategies modulate the involvement of a certain brain region for phonological learning in a new language, and consequently affect their behavioral performance on phonological access.

Methods: To address this question, the present study recruited a group of native Chinese speakers to learn two sets of artificial language characters, respectively, in addressed-phonology training (i.

Neural representation of phonological information during Chinese character reading.

Previous studies have revealed that phonological processing of Chinese characters elicited activation in the left prefrontal cortex, bilateral parietal cortex, and occipitotemporal regions. However, it is controversial what role the left middle frontal gyrus plays in Chinese character reading, and whether the core regions (e.g.