ABSTRACT

The visual word form area (VWFA), a region canonically located within left ventral temporal cortex (VTC), is specialized for orthography in literate adults presumbly due to its connectivity with frontotemporal language regions. But is a typical, left-lateralized language network critical for the VWFA’s emergence? We investigated this question in an individual (EG) born without the left superior temporal lobe but who has normal reading ability. EG showed canonical typical face-selectivity bilateraly but no wordselectivity either in right VWFA or in the spared left VWFA. Moreover, in contrast with the idea that the VWFA is simply part of the language network, no part of EG’s VTC showed selectivity to higher-level linguistic processing. Interestingly, EG’s VWFA showed reliable multivariate patterns that distinguished words from other categories. These results suggest that a typical left-hemisphere language network is necessary for acanonical VWFA, and that orthographic processing can otherwise be supported by a distributed neural code.

摘要

视觉词形区（VWFA）是典型地位于左腹侧颞叶皮层（VTC）内的一个区域，专门用于识字成人的拼写，可能是因为它与额颞叶语言区域的连接。但典型的左偏语言网络对于 VWFA 的出现至关重要吗？我们在一个出生时没有左上颞叶但具有正常阅读能力的个体（EG）中调查了这个问题。EG 显示出典型的双侧面部选择性，但在右侧 VWFA 或幸存的左侧 VWFA 中都没有单词选择性。此外，与 VWFA 只是语言网络的一部分的观点相反，EG 的 VTC 的任何部分都没有表现出对高级语言处理的选择性。有趣的是，EG 的 VWFA 显示了可靠的多元模式，可以将单词与其他类别区分开来。