Cattaneo Zaira, Rota Federica, Walsh Vincent, Vecchi Tomaso, Silvanto Juha
Department of Psychology, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
Cereb Cortex. 2009 Oct;19(10):2321-5. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhn249. Epub 2009 Jan 15.
Activation of the left posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has been associated with the encoding of letters independent of visual form. Here we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)-adaptation to investigate whether this abstract letter selectivity plays a causal role in letter processing. Visual adaptation was used to manipulate the initial activation state of neurons tuned to different letters prior to the application of TMS, after which subjects performed a detection task on letters that were presented in a different case from the adapting letter. After adaptation, TMS applied over the left PPC facilitated the detection of the adapted letter, whereas it had no impact on the detection of nonadapted letters. TMS applied over the right PPC had no significant effect on either type of letter. This interaction between adaptation and the effects of left PPC TMS demonstrates that adaptation modulated neural activity in the left PPC and thus demonstrates abstract letter selectivity in this region. Importantly, as the adapted letter and the target letters were presented in different cases, this finding demonstrates that the left PPC plays a causal role in letter processing independent of visual form.
左后顶叶皮层(PPC)的激活与独立于视觉形式的字母编码有关。在这里,我们使用经颅磁刺激(TMS)适应性来研究这种抽象字母选择性在字母处理中是否起因果作用。在应用TMS之前,使用视觉适应性来操纵调谐到不同字母的神经元的初始激活状态,之后受试者对以与适应字母不同的大小写呈现的字母执行检测任务。适应后,施加在左PPC上的TMS促进了对适应字母的检测,而对未适应字母的检测没有影响。施加在右PPC上的TMS对任何一种字母都没有显著影响。适应与左PPC TMS效应之间的这种相互作用表明,适应调节了左PPC中的神经活动,从而证明了该区域的抽象字母选择性。重要的是,由于适应字母和目标字母以不同的大小写呈现,这一发现表明左PPC在独立于视觉形式的字母处理中起因果作用。
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