Neural deficits in children with dyslexia ameliorated by behavioral remediation: Evidence from functional MRI

Temple, Elise; Deutsch, Gayle K.; Poldrack, Russell A.; Miller, Steven L.; Tallal, Paula; Merzenich, Michael M.; Gabrieli, John D. E.

doi:10.1073/pnas.0030098100

Cited by 648 publications

(542 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Behavioral evidence supports a similar link between decoding and enhancements of word recognition [37]. Furthermore, training effects in reading-impaired children have recently been linked to changes in fMRI activation, including posterior occipitotemporal regions in the vicinity of the VWFA [38], as children attempt to link letters to sounds.…”

Section: Development Of the Vwfamentioning

confidence: 85%

The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus

McCandliss

Cohen

Dehaene

2003

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

1,272

934

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Brain imaging studies reliably localize a region of visual cortex that is especially responsive to visual words. This brain specialization is essential to rapid reading ability because it enhances perception of words by becoming specifically tuned to recurring properties of a writing system. The origin of this specialization poses a challenge for evolutionary accounts involving innate mechanisms for functional brain organization. We propose an alternative account, based on studies of other forms of visual expertise (i.e. bird and car experts) that lead to functional reorganization. We argue that the interplay between the unique demands of word reading and the structural constraints of the visual system lead to the emergence of the Visual Word Form Area.Years after children first learn to decode letters into words, a form of perceptual expertise emerges in which groups of letters are rapidly and effortlessly conjoined into integrated visual percepts -a process that is crucial to fluent reading ability. This article reviews the current evidence in support of a link between visual word form perception and a functional specialization in a brain region that we propose to call the 'Visual Word Form Area' (VWFA) -a portion of the left fusiform gyrus that is particularly responsive to visual words. Systematic exploration of the response properties of this region reveals sensitivity to specific and abstract qualities of visual word forms that are not easily attributable to more basic stimulus properties, and are also separable from higher-order linguistic properties.Considering the origin of VWFA poses a paradox for evolutionary accounts of functional specialization of extrastriate visual areas, given that the cultural invention of writing upon which this specialization is predicated did not exist until , 5400 years ago, which is insufficient time for selective pressures to engineer a specialized 'module' for visual word recognition. Instead, we suggest a developmental process through which reading experience drives progressive specialization of a pre-existing inferotemporal pathway for visual object recognition. Under this view, the rise of perceptual expertise in word recognition provides a remarkable example of how specialization processes within the visual system can accommodate a novel cultural invention. Perceptual expertise underlying visual word recognitionLiterate adults possess a special form of visual expertise that allows their visual system to process words efficiently. Within less than 250 ms of viewing a written word, the visual system extracts the information needed to identify its linguistic significance, despite wide variations in print, script, font, size and retinal position. Several lines of cognitive evidence indicate that the perceptual mechanisms that support word recognition rest on a critical process that groups the letters of a word together into an integrated perceptual unit (i.e. a 'visual word form'). This process is highly sensitive to the abstract structural properties of the writing syste...

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Section: Development Of the Vwfamentioning

confidence: 85%

The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus

McCandliss

Cohen

Dehaene

2003

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

1,272

934

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These children have difficulty performing phonological awareness tasks such as knowing what word remains if the sound 'P' is deleted from the word 'Paris' 73 . Brain research shows that, when performing these kinds of tasks, dyslexic children show hypo-activation in the left temporo-parietal cortex, which is believed to link auditory and visual processes during reading 74 . How could this finding help a teacher deal with a dyslexic child?…”

Section: R E V I E Wmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroscience and education: prime time to build the bridge

et al. 2014

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“…The left posterior superior temporal gyrus and adjacent angular and supramarginal gyrus are involved in grapheme-phoneme conversion and fine-grained phonemic analysis for alphabetic reading [Booth et al, 2003a;Eden et al, 2004;Poldrack et al, 2001;Temple et al, 2003] and the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45/46/47) is involved in phonological manipulation [Fiez et al, 1999] and subvocal rehearsal in phonological processing [Chein and Fiez, 2001]. Both of these processes are more involved in English reading than Chinese reading.…”

Section: Differences Between Chinese and Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Writing affects the brain network of reading in Chinese: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Cao

Chan

et al. 2012

Human Brain Mapping

107

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Abstract:We examined the hypothesis that learning to write Chinese characters influences the brain's reading network for characters. Students from a college Chinese class learned 30 characters in a characterwriting condition and 30 characters in a pinyin-writing condition. After learning, functional magnetic resonance imaging collected during passive viewing showed different networks for reading Chinese characters and English words, suggesting accommodation to the demands of the new writing system through shortterm learning. Beyond these expected differences, we found specific effects of character writing in greater activation (relative to pinyin writing) in bilateral superior parietal lobules and bilateral lingual gyri in both a lexical decision and an implicit writing task. These findings suggest that character writing establishes a higher quality representation of the visual-spatial structure of the character and its orthography. We found a greater involvement of bilateral sensori-motor cortex (SMC) for character-writing trained characters than pinyin-writing trained characters in the lexical decision task, suggesting that learning by doing invokes greater interaction with sensori-motor information during character recognition. Furthermore, we found a correlation of recognition accuracy with activation in right superior parietal lobule, right lingual gyrus, and left SMC, suggesting that these areas support the facilitative effect character writing has on reading. Finally, consistent with previous behavioral studies, we found character-writing training facilitates connections with semantics by producing greater activation in bilateral middle temporal gyri, whereas pinyin-writing training facilitates connections with phonology by producing greater activation in right inferior frontal gyrus.

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Neural deficits in children with dyslexia ameliorated by behavioral remediation: Evidence from functional MRI

Cited by 648 publications

References 34 publications

The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus

The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus

Neuroscience and education: prime time to build the bridge

Writing affects the brain network of reading in Chinese: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study

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