Reading in the Brain (Les neurones de la lecture, 2007) examined the origins of human reading abilities in the light of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. It argued that reading acquisition, in all cultures, recycles preexisting cortical circuits dedicated to invariant visual recognition, and that the organization of these circuits imposes strong constraints on the invention and cultural evol...

Reading is an important but phylogenetically new skill. While neuroimaging studies have identified brain regions used in reading, it is unclear to what extent these regions become specialized for use predominantly in reading vs. other tasks. Over the past several years, our group has published three studies addressing this question, particularly focusing on whether the putative visual word form...

The first steps in the process of reading a printed word belong to the domain of visual object perception. They culminate in a representation of letter strings as an ordered set of abstract letter identities, a representation known as the Visual Word Form (VWF). Brain lesions in patients with pure alexia and functional imaging data suggest that the VWF is subtended by a restricted patch of left...

Written texts are not just words but complex multidimensional stimuli, including aspects such as case, font, and handwriting style, for example. Neuropsychological reports suggest that left fusiform lesions can impair the reading of text for word (lexical) content, being associated with alexia, whereas right-sided lesions may impair handwriting recognition. We used fMRI adaptation in 13 healthy...

Abstract It remains under debate whether the fusiform visual word form area (VWFA) is specific to visual word form and whether visual expertise increases its sensitivity (Xue et al., 2006; Cohen et al., 2002). The present study examined three related issues: (1) whether the VWFA is also involved in processing foreign writing that significantly differs from the native one, (2) the effect of visu...

It has long been debated whether attention alters the categorical selectivity in regions such as the fusiform face area (FFA) and the visual word form area (VWFA). We addressed this issue by examining whether the spatial pattern of neural representations for certain stimulus categories in these regions would change under different attention conditions. Faces, Chinese characters, and textures we...

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 Ibalpha (GpIbalpha) binding conformation. Here, we discuss a llama-derived antibody fragment (AU/VWFa-11) that specifically recognizes the GpIbalpha-binding conformation. AU/VWFa-11 is unable to bind VWF in solution, but efficient...

Cognitive neuroscience has long attempted to determine the ways in which cortical selectivity develops, and the impact of nature vs. nurture on it. Congenital blindness (CB) offers a unique opportunity to test this question as the brains of blind individuals develop without visual experience. Here we approach this question through the reading network. Several areas in the visual cortex have bee...