Pure alexia is an acquired reading disorder, typically due to a left occipito-temporal lesion affecting the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA). It is unclear whether the VWFA acts as a unique bottleneck for reading, or whether alternative routes are available for recovery. Here, we address this issue through the single-case longitudinal study of a neuroscientist who experienced pure alexia and partic...

The importance of the left occipitotemporal cortex for visual word processing is highlighted by numerous functional neuroimaging studies, but the precise function of the visual word form area (VWFA) in this brain region is still under debate. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study varied orthographic familiarity independent from phonological-semantic familiarity by presenting o...

A century of neurology and neuroscience shows that seeing words depends on ventral occipital-temporal (VOT) circuitry. Typically, reading is learned using high-contrast line-contour words. We explored whether a specific VOT region, the visual word form area (VWFA), learns to see only these words or recognizes words independent of the specific shape-defining visual features. Word forms were crea...

Functional neuroimaging and studies of brain-damaged patients made it possible to delineate the main components of the cerebral system for word reading. However, the anatomical connections subtending the flow of information within this network are still poorly defined. Here we study the connectivity of the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), a pivotal component of the reading network achieving the in...

Von Willebrand factor (VWF) is unable to interact spontaneously with platelets because this interaction requires a conversion of the VWF A1 domain into a glycoprotein Ib (GpIb ) binding conformation. Here, we discuss a llama-derived antibody fragment (AU/VWFa-11) that specifically recognizes the GpIb -binding conformation. AU/VWFa-11 is unable to bind VWF in solution, but efficiently interacts ...

Current neurocognitive research suggests that the efficiency of visual word recognition rests on abstract memory representations of written letters and words stored in the visual word form area (VWFA) in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. These representations are assumed to be invariant to visual characteristics such as font and case. In the present functional MRI study, we tested this ...

Developmental dyslexia is a severe reading disorder, which is characterized by dysfluent reading and impaired automaticity of visual word processing. Adults with dyslexia show functional deficits in several brain regions including the so-called "Visual Word Form Area" (VWFA), which is implicated in visual word processing and located within the larger left occipitotemporal VWF-System. The presen...

A number of recent studies consistently show an area, known as the visual word form area (VWFA), in the left fusiform gyrus that is selectively responsive for visual words in alphabetic scripts as well as in logographic scripts, such as Chinese characters. However, given the large difference between Chinese characters and alphabetic scripts in terms of their orthographic rules, it is not clear ...

Theories of reading have posited the existence of a neural representation coding for whole real words (i.e., an orthographic lexicon), but experimental support for such a representation has proved elusive. Using fMRI rapid adaptation techniques, we provide evidence that the human left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (specifically the "visual word form area," VWFA) contains a representation base...

The visual word form area (VWFA) is a region of left inferior occipitotemporal cortex that is critically involved in visual word recognition. Previous studies have investigated whether and how experience shapes the functional characteristics of VWFA by comparing neural response magnitude in response to words and nonwords. Conflicting results have been obtained, however, perhaps because response...