Department of Medical Neurobiology, Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Curr Biol. 2011 Mar 8;21(5):363-8. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.01.040. Epub 2011 Feb 17.
The visual word form area (VWFA) is a ventral stream visual area that develops expertise for visual reading. It is activated across writing systems and scripts and encodes letter strings irrespective of case, font, or location in the visual field with striking anatomical reproducibility across individuals. In the blind, comparable reading expertise can be achieved using Braille. This study investigated which area plays the role of the VWFA in the blind. One would expect this area to be at either parietal or bilateral occipital cortex, reflecting the tactile nature of the task and crossmodal plasticity, respectively. However, according to the metamodal theory, which suggests that brain areas are responsive to a specific representation or computation regardless of their input sensory modality, we predicted recruitment of the left-hemispheric VWFA, identically to the sighted. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that activation during Braille reading in blind individuals peaks in the VWFA, with striking anatomical consistency within and between blind and sighted. Furthermore, the VWFA is reading selective when contrasted to high-level language and low-level sensory controls. Thus, we propose that the VWFA is a metamodal reading area that develops specialization for reading regardless of visual experience.
视词形区（VWFA）是一个腹侧流视觉区域，它为视觉阅读发展专长。它在各种书写系统和文字中被激活，并且不论大小写、字体或在视野中的位置如何，都以惊人的个体间解剖学重现性对字母串进行编码。在盲人中，可以使用盲文来实现类似的阅读专长。本研究探讨了在盲人中哪个区域扮演 VWFA 的角色。人们可能会期望这个区域位于顶叶或双侧枕叶皮层，分别反映任务的触觉性质和跨模态可塑性。然而，根据跨模态理论，该理论表明，大脑区域对特定的表示或计算有反应，而与它们的输入感觉模态无关，我们预测左半球 VWFA 的招募与明眼人相同。使用功能磁共振成像，我们表明，盲人在盲文阅读期间的激活在 VWFA 中达到峰值，并且在盲人和明眼人之间具有惊人的解剖一致性。此外，当与高级语言和低级感觉控制进行对比时，VWFA 具有阅读选择性。因此，我们提出 VWFA 是一个跨模态阅读区域，它为阅读发展专长，而与视觉体验无关。
