In a study in which 24 native English speakers, ages 18-30 years, were taught to read words written in 2 different artificial alphabets, fMRI scans taken while the participants read the words provided evidence of a hierarchy of brain areas involved in reading within the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, with posterior regions encoding information about letter position within words and left mid-to-anterior regions encoding phonological and semantic information, providing insight into how visual symbols map onto language in the brain.
###
Article #18-18575: "Mapping visual symbols onto spoken language along the ventral visual stream," by J. S. H. Taylor, Matthew H. Davis, and Kathleen Rastle.
MEDIA CONTACT: Samantha Daynes, Royal Holloway University of London, Edgham, UNITED KINGDOM; tel: +44-7929-237747; e-mail: Samantha.Daynes@rhul.ac.uk
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences