Department of Neurology, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO 63110, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2012 Mar;22(3):537-49. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr100. Epub 2011 Jun 20.
The putative visual word form area (pVWFA) is the most consistently activated region in single word reading studies (i.e., Vigneau et al. 2006), yet its function remains a matter of debate. The pVWFA may be predominantly used in reading or it could be a more general visual processor used in reading but also in other visual tasks. Here, resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fcMRI) is used to characterize the functional relationships of the pVWFA to help adjudicate between these possibilities. rs-fcMRI defines relationships based on correlations in slow fluctuations of blood oxygen level-dependent activity occurring at rest. In this study, rs-fcMRI correlations show little relationship between the pVWFA and reading-related regions but a strong relationship between the pVWFA and dorsal attention regions thought to be related to spatial and feature attention. The rs-fcMRI correlations between the pVWFA and regions of the dorsal attention network increase with age and reading skill, while the correlations between the pVWFA and reading-related regions do not. These results argue the pVWFA is not used predominantly in reading but is a more general visual processor used in other visual tasks, as well as reading.
假定的视觉词形区（pVWFA）是在单个单词阅读研究中最常被激活的区域（即 Vigneau 等人，2006 年），但其功能仍然存在争议。pVWFA 可能主要用于阅读，也可能是一种更通用的视觉处理器，不仅用于阅读，还用于其他视觉任务。在这里，静息态功能磁共振成像（rs-fcMRI）用于描述 pVWFA 与其他区域的功能关系，以帮助解决这些可能性之间的争议。rs-fcMRI 基于在静息时发生的血氧水平依赖活动的缓慢波动的相关性来定义关系。在这项研究中，rs-fcMRI 相关性显示 pVWFA 与阅读相关区域之间的关系很小，但与被认为与空间和特征注意力相关的背侧注意区域之间的关系很强。pVWFA 与背侧注意网络区域之间的 rs-fcMRI 相关性随年龄和阅读技能的增加而增加，而 pVWFA 与阅读相关区域之间的相关性则没有增加。这些结果表明，pVWFA 主要不是用于阅读，而是用于其他视觉任务以及阅读的更通用的视觉处理器。
