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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on August 14, 2009
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp175
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Left Ventral Occipito-Temporal Response to Words Depends on Language Lateralization but Not on Visual Familiarity

Qing Cai1, Yves Paulignan1, Marc Brysbaert2, Danielle Ibarrola3 and Tatjana A. Nazir1

1 Laboratory of Language, Brain and Cognition (L2C2), CNRS-University of Lyon UMR 5230, 69675 Bron, France, 2 Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium, 3 Centre d’Etude et de Recherche Multimodal et Pluridisciplinaire (CERMEP)-Imagerie du vivant, University of Lyon, 69677 Bron, France

Address correspondence to Qing Cai, Laboratory of Language, Brain and Cognition, Institute for cognitive sciences, CNRS—University of Lyon, 67, Boulevard Pinel, 69675 Bron Cedex, France. Email: qing.cai{at}isc.cnrs.fr.

The sensitivity of the left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex to visual word processing has triggered a considerable debate about the role of this region in reading. One popular view is that the left vOT underlies the perceptual expertise needed for rapid skilled reading. Because skilled reading breaks down when words are presented in a visually unfamiliar format, we tested this hypothesis by analyzing vOT responses to horizontally presented words (familiar format) and vertically presented words (unfamiliar format). In addition, we compared the activity in participants with left and right cerebral dominance for language generation. Our results revealed 1) that the vOT activity during reading is lateralized to the same side as the inferior frontal activity during word generation, 2) that vertically and horizontally presented words triggered the same amount of activity in the vOT of the dominant hemisphere, but 3) that there was significantly more activity for vertically presented words in the vOT of the nondominant hemisphere. We suggest that the reading-related activity in vOT reflects the integration of general perceptual processes with language processing in the anterior brain regions and is not limited to skilled reading in the familiar horizontal format.

Key Words: cerebral lateralization • perceptual expertise in reading • visual familiarity • visual word reading • vOT (ventral occipito-temporal) activity


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