5. Reading in The Brain

Question 1

How was classical model of reading built?

Answer 1

Déjèrine noticed patients who lost ability to read had lesions in angular gyrus
- This was outside of Wernicke’s original neurological model of language so was added

Question 2

What types of acquired dyslexia are there?

Answer 2

• Surface dyslexia- can read our regular and pseudowords phonetically but not irregular words
• Phonological dyslexia- can read regular and irregular words but not pseudowords

Question 3

Outline a newer reading model

Answer 3

Occipital lobe
vOT cortex
Angular gyrus and tp junction
LIFC

Question 4

What evidence is there for vOT importance in reading? What disputes this?

Answer 4

(Leff et al., 2001)
• Pure alexics can’t read but can write so theorised VWFA

Counter evidence:
(Dahaene et al., 2001)
• Repetition suppression of VWFA for a word even if presented in a different case so this cannot be a purely visual effect

(Price and Devlin, 2003)
• Visual picture recognition- tiger more active in image form
• VWFA also activates when asked about actions and sizes
—> not specific to visual words

(Starrfelt et al., 2009)
• Pure alexics can recognise images but have other deficits when comparing or doing more complex tasks

Question 5

Describe the homology breakdown between humans and other primates when it comes to VWFA

Answer 5

• vOT area cytoarchitechture- cell structure densities differ between species

• Functional mismatch- FFA in right hemisphere is active in human facial recognition but not macaque
(Pinsk et al., 2005)

Question 6

Outline a study that separates the function of Broca’s in reading

Answer 6

(Mechelli et al., 2005)
• Brain response to pseudowords and phonetically unusual exception words like “quay” using functional imaging
• Pseudowords activated more pars opercularis
• Unusual words activated more pars triangularis (semantics)- more difficult to recognise
-> different processing requirements
-> two routes from vOT hypothesised