A cultural effect on brain function

Paulesu, Eraldo; McCrory, Eamon; Fazio, Ferruccio; Menoncello, L.; Brunswick, Nicola; Cappa, Stefano F.; Cotelli, Maria; Cossu, Giuseppe; Corte, Francesco Della; Lorusso, Maria Luisa; Pesenti, S.; Gallagher, Ann-Marie; Perani, Daniela; Price, Cathy J.; Frith, CD; Frith, Uta

doi:10.1038/71163

Cited by 517 publications

(442 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…This pattern could represent an assembled phonology (GPC) pathway that is particularly activated by nonwords. Indeed, activation of this region by nonwords relative to words in a few prior studies has been so interpreted (Mechelli et al, 2003;Paulesu et al, 2000;Xu et al, 2001). While this interpretation cannot be entirely discounted, the same pattern of activation across contrasts occurred in the left FEF and right IPS, neither of which showed differences between Regular and Irregular words.…”

Section: The Dexclusivet Dual-route Modelmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…One relatively reliable finding is stronger activation to nonwords than words in the left frontal operculum and adjacent anterior insula (Fiez et al, 1999;Hagoort et al, 1999;Herbster et al, 1997;Mechelli et al, 2003;Paulesu et al, 2000;Xu et al, 2001). Because the dual-route model proposes greater reliance on the nonlexical GPC system in the case of nonwords, these findings have often been interpreted as evidence for such a system in the left inferior frontal lobe.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Some neurophysiological constraints on models of word naming

et al. 2005

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The pronunciation of irregular words in deep orthographies like English cannot be specified by simple rules. On the other hand, the fact that novel letter strings can be pronounced seems to imply the existence of such rules. These facts motivate dual-route models of word naming, which postulate separate lexical (whole-word) and non-lexical (rulebased) mechanisms for accessing phonology. We used fMRI during oral naming of irregular words, regular words, and nonwords, to test this theory against a competing single-mechanism account known as the triangle model, which proposes that all words are handled by a single system containing distributed orthographic, phonological, and semantic codes rather than word codes. Two versions of the dual-route model were distinguished: an dexclusiveT version in which activation of one processing route predominates over the other, and a dparallelT version in which both routes are equally activated by all words. The fMRI results provide no support for the exclusive dual-route model. Several frontal, insular, anterior cingulate, and parietal regions showed responses that increased with naming difficulty (nonword > irregular word > regular word) and were correlated with response time, but there was no activation consistent with the predicted response of a nonlexical, rule-based mechanism (i.e., nonword > regular word > irregular word). Several regions, including the angular gyrus and dorsal prefrontal cortex bilaterally, left ventromedial temporal lobe, and posterior cingulate gyrus, were activated more by words than nonwords, but these dlexical routeT regions were equally active for irregular and regular words. The results are compatible with both the parallel dual-route model and the triangle model. dLexical routeT regions also showed effects of word imageability. Together with previous imaging studies using semantic task contrasts, the imageability effects are consistent with semantic processing in these brain regions, suggesting that word naming is partly semantically-mediated. D 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Word naming; Dual-route model; Triangle model IntroductionThe correspondence between spoken and written forms of a language is not always systematic. While in some alphabetic orthographies the sound of a word can be worked out using rules of pronunciation, in most, there are varying degrees of irregularity in the mapping between print and sound. In English, for example, Bernard Shaw pointed out that the word ''fish'' could be written ghoti if one were mischievous enough to borrow the spelling for /f/ from rough, the spelling of /I/ from women, and the spelling of /sh/ from nation. Words like colonel and yacht are only some of the more extreme examples of such irregularity of pronunciation, which is pervasive in English and is seen in many of its more common words, including some, many, of, the, and word just used in this sentence.While the pronunciation of these dirregularT words would seem to be learned through rote memorization of the whole word, there is...

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Section: The Dexclusivet Dual-route Modelmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Some neurophysiological constraints on models of word naming

et al. 2005

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“…Activation in this region can be identified merely by contrasting word reading relative to rest, either with PET or with fMRI (Beauregard et al, 1997;Brunswick et al, 1999;Fiez et al, 1999;Paulesu et al, 2000;Wagner et al, 1998). This region appears as a likely source of electrical and magnetic fields that are recorded over the left ventral occipitotemporal region, with a latency of about 150 -200 ms, whenever subjects see words Cohen et al, 2000;Nobre et al, 1994;Salmelin et al, 1996;Simos et al, 2002;Tarkiainen et al, 1999).…”

Section: Evidence For Reproducible Localizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Specialization within the ventral stream: the case for the visual word form area

2004

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Is there specialization for visual word recognition within the visual ventral stream of literate human adults? We review the evidence for a specialized ''visual word form area'' and critically examine some of the arguments recently placed against this hypothesis. Three distinct forms of specialization must be distinguished: functional specialization, reproducible localization, and regional selectivity. Examination of the literature with this theoretical division in mind indicates that reading activates a precise subpart of the left ventral occipitotemporal sulcus, and that patients with pure alexia consistently exhibit lesions of this region (reproducible localization). Second, this region implements processes adequate for reading in a specific script, such as invariance across upper-and lower-case letters, and its lesion results in the selective loss of reading-specific processes (functional specialization). Third, the issue of regional selectivity, namely, the existence of putative cortical patches dedicated to letter and word recognition, cannot be resolved by positron emission tomography or lesion data, but requires high-resolution neuroimaging techniques. The available evidence from single-subject fMRI and intracranial recordings suggests that some cortical sites respond preferentially to letter strings than to other categories of visual stimuli such as faces or objects, though the preference is often relative rather than absolute. We conclude that learning to read results in the progressive development of an inferotemporal region increasingly responsive to visual words, which is aptly named the visual word form area (VWFA).

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“…Boatman et al (1997) have reported in five patients that the stimulation of one temporal electrode in this region elicited a deficit in syllable discrimination. The more posterior part of the temporal region is also activated when phonological representations are accessed through devices other than auditory input, such as lip reading (Calvert and Campbell, 2003;Calvert et al, 1997), word generation (Buchsbaum et al, 2001;Wise et al, 2001), sign language processing (Petitto et al, 2000), and reading (Paulesu et al, 2000(Paulesu et al, , 2001. It is possible that top-down attention amplifies those speech representation, thus bringing knowledge of the characteristics of a human voice to supplement the poverty of the sinewave input and integrate its acoustical features into phonemic representations.…”

Section: Fmrimentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of switching from auditory to speech perception

et al. 2005

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Many people exposed to sinewave analogues of speech first report hearing them as electronic glissando and, later, when they switch into a dspeech modeT, hearing them as syllables. This perceptual switch modifies their discrimination abilities, enhancing perception of differences that cross phonemic boundaries while diminishing perception of differences within phonemic categories. Using high-density evoked potentials and fMRI in a discrimination paradigm, we studied the changes in brain activity that are related to this change in perception. With ERPs, we observed that phonemic coding is faster than acoustic coding: The electrophysiological mismatch response (MMR) occurred earlier for a phonemic change than for an equivalent acoustic change. The MMR topography was also more asymmetric for a phonemic change than for an acoustic change. In fMRI, activations were also significantly asymmetric, favoring the left hemisphere in both perception modes. Furthermore, switching to the speech mode significantly enhanced activation in the posterior parts of the left superior gyrus and sulcus relative to the non-speech mode. When responses to a change of stimulus were studied, a cluster of voxels in the supramarginal gyrus was activated significantly more by a phonemic change than by an acoustic change. These results demonstrate that phoneme perception in adults relies on a specific and highly efficient left-hemispheric network, which can be activated in top-down fashion when processing ambiguous speech/non-speech stimuli.

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A cultural effect on brain function

Cited by 517 publications

References 29 publications

Some neurophysiological constraints on models of word naming

Some neurophysiological constraints on models of word naming

Specialization within the ventral stream: the case for the visual word form area

Neural correlates of switching from auditory to speech perception

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