A novel hypothesis for the original functionality of the VisualWord Form Area: Processing shape sequences

Whitney, C.; Ross, P.; Zhou, Z.; Strother, L.

Abstract

There is ongoing debate about what characteristics of left ventral occipitotemporal cortex drive development of the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA). We offer a new hypothesis. A summary of occipitotemporal organization indicates that the VWFA falls in a cortical region supporting action analysis, rather than object recognition. We discuss evidence that letters are serially processed in a top-down manner during the initial years of reading acquisition, and propose that this sequential activation of letter representations causes the VWFA to develop in motion-sensitive cortex specialized for processing of non-biological shape sequences. Supporting this hypothesis, a new fMRI analysis identifies a left-lateralized region that responds more strongly to dynamic motion of objects than humans; this region's location (-48, -55, -8) falls almost exactly at the canonical VWFA coordinates (-45, -57, -12).

Citation

Whitney, C., Ross, P., Zhou, Z., & Strother, L. (2019). A novel hypothesis for the original functionality of the VisualWord Form Area: Processing shape sequences. PsyArXiv (Preprint Server for Psychology), https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/g3n2m

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2019
• Deposit Date: Aug 9, 2018
• Journal: PsyArXiv (Preprint Server for Psychology)
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/g3n2m
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1352376