Dȩbska Agnieszka, Wójcik Marta, Chyl Katarzyna, Dziȩgiel-Fivet Gabriela, Jednoróg Katarzyna
Laboratory of Language Neurobiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
The Educational Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2023 Jul 28;17:1199366. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1199366. eCollection 2023.
The left ventral occipitotemporal cortex has been traditionally viewed as a pathway for visual object recognition including written letters and words. Its crucial role in reading was strengthened by the studies on the functionally localized "Visual Word Form Area" responsible for processing word-like information. However, in the past 20 years, empirical studies have challenged the assumptions of this brain region as processing exclusively visual or even orthographic stimuli. In this review, we aimed to present the development of understanding of the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex from the visually based letter area to the modality-independent symbolic language related region. We discuss theoretical and empirical research that includes orthographic, phonological, and semantic properties of language. Existing results showed that involvement of the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex is not limited to unimodal activity but also includes multimodal processes. The idea of the integrative nature of this region is supported by the broad functional and structural connectivity with language-related and attentional brain networks. We conclude that although the function of the area is not yet fully understood in human cognition, its role goes beyond visual word form processing. The left ventral occipitotemporal cortex seems to be crucial for combining higher-level language information with abstract forms that convey meaning independently of modality.
传统上，左腹侧枕颞叶皮层被视为视觉物体识别的一条通路，包括书写字母和单词。对负责处理类单词信息的功能定位“视觉词形区”的研究，强化了其在阅读中的关键作用。然而，在过去20年里，实证研究对该脑区仅处理视觉甚至正字法刺激的假设提出了挑战。在这篇综述中，我们旨在阐述对左腹侧枕颞叶皮层的认识发展，从基于视觉的字母区域到与模态无关的符号语言相关区域。我们讨论了包括语言的正字法、语音和语义属性在内的理论和实证研究。现有结果表明，左腹侧枕颞叶皮层的参与不仅限于单模态活动，还包括多模态过程。该区域整合性质的观点得到了与语言相关和注意力脑网络广泛的功能和结构连接的支持。我们得出结论，尽管该区域在人类认知中的功能尚未完全明了，但其作用超出了视觉词形处理。左腹侧枕颞叶皮层似乎对于将高级语言信息与独立于模态传达意义的抽象形式相结合至关重要。
