The DOI matches its Crossref record; 118 of the 118 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 140 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.
Specialization within the ventral stream: the case for the visual word form area
Abstract
Is there specialization for visual word recognition within the visual ventral stream of literate human adults? We review the evidence for a specialized "visual word form area" and critically examine some of the arguments recently placed against this hypothesis. Three distinct forms of specialization must be distinguished: functional specialization, reproducible localization, and regional selectivity. Examination of the literature with this theoretical division in mind indicates that reading activates a precise subpart of the left ventral occipitotemporal sulcus, and that patients with pure alexia consistently exhibit lesions of this region (reproducible localization). Second, this region implements processes adequate for reading in a specific script, such as invariance across upper- and lower-case letters, and its lesion results in the selective loss of reading-specific processes (functional specialization). Third, the issue of regional selectivity, namely, the existence of putative cortical patches dedicated to letter and word recognition, cannot be resolved by positron emission tomography or lesion data, but requires high-resolution neuroimaging techniques. The available evidence from single-subject fMRI and intracranial recordings suggests that some cortical sites respond preferentially to letter strings than to other categories of visual stimuli such as faces or objects, though the preference is often relative rather than absolute. We conclude that learning to read results in the progressive development of an inferotemporal region increasingly responsive to visual words, which is aptly named the visual word form area (VWFA).
Overview
AI snapshot
Written from the paper’s full text.
TL;DR
Cohen and Dehaene argue that reading in literate adults relies on a specialized left ventral occipitotemporal region, the visual word form area (VWFA), and that evidence supports functional specialization and reproducible localization, though not definitive regional selectivity. They review neuroimaging and pure alexia data to rebut Price and Devlin’s critique.
Key findings
- The paper distinguishes three forms of specialization: functional specialization, reproducible localization, and regional selectivity. It concludes that reading activates a precise subpart of the left ventral occipitotemporal sulcus and that pure alexia consistently involves lesions there, supporting reproducible localization.
- Functional specialization is supported by reading-specific effects: the VWFA responds more to consonant strings than pseudo-letters/false fonts, more to words/pseudo-words than random consonant strings, and shows case-invariant priming across upper- and lower-case letters.
- The VWFA is found at the same Talairach location with a standard deviation of only about half a centimeter; essentially all subjects show left-hemisphere word-induced activation, while right-sided activation is weaker and found in only a few subjects.
- Regional selectivity is not definitively established: most word-responsive patches also activate to pictures or drawings, and the authors argue that PET group data with 15-mm spatial smoothness cannot resolve this issue.
Methods
- Theoretical review and critical commentary, not a new empirical study. It reviews functional neuroimaging (PET, fMRI, MEG, intracranial recordings) and neuropsychological studies of pure alexia.
- The authors emphasize high-resolution single-subject fMRI and intracranial recordings for localization/selectivity, and lesion-overlap studies for anatomo-clinical correlation.
- They argue that PET data are appropriate for functional contrasts but not for fine anatomical specialization, and that priming/adaptation designs are needed to test shared circuitry.
Limitations
- The authors state that evidence for regional selectivity is not definitive; most cortical patches responding to words also activate to other stimuli, and current imaging resolution is several millimeters.
- They note that PET/fMRI are ill-adapted to resolve top-down versus bottom-up temporal dynamics, and that across-study variability can be higher due to differences in brain normalization.
- Evident from the text: this is a letter/review defending the VWFA against a specific critique, not a systematic meta-analysis, and several cited supporting studies are in press or in preparation.
Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.
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Claims the paper makes
91 Not checked yet · 63 Own interpretation · 14 No basis given · 8 Own method · 7 Own result · 3 Sources not found
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In the paper
“The available evidence from single-subject fMRI and intracranial recordings suggests that some cortical sites respond preferentially to letter strings than to other categories of visual stimuli such as faces or objects, though the preference is often relative rather than absolute.”
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“patients with pure alexia consistently exhibit lesions of this region (reproducible localization).”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Examination of the literature with this theoretical division in mind indicates that reading activates a precise subpart of the left ventral occipitotemporal sulcus”
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“We do not, however, believe that there is complete regional selectivity for word recognition.”
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In the paper
“A large number of studies, using various methods, have evidenced a reproducible activation of the left fusiform gyrus during reading.”
What the sources say
boostedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“although it provides evidence for functional specialization for case-invariant letter recognition in the left fusiform region (Dehaene et al., 2001; Dehaene et al., in press).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Dehaene et al., 2001 source
- Not checked yetcites Dehaene et al., in press
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Activation in this region can be identified merely by contrasting word reading relative to rest, either with PET or with fMRI (Beauregard et al., 1997; Brunswick et al., 1999; Dehaene et al., 2002; Fiez et al., 1999; Paulesu et al., 2000; Wagner et al., 1998).”
What the sources say
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In the paper
“This region appears as a likely source of electrical and magnetic fields that are recorded over the left ventral occipitotemporal region, with a latency of about 150-200 ms, whenever subjects see words (Allison et al., 1994, 1999; Cohen et al., 2000; Nobre et al., 1994; Salmelin et al., 1996; Simos et al., 2002; Tarkiainen et al., 1999).”
What the sources say
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Even the voxels that respond optimally to words tend to be also activated by other stimuli such as pictures or line drawings of objects.”
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The VWFA is found at the same location in Talairach space (approximately 43, 54, 12) with a standard deviation of only about half a centimeter.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- It may state two separate claims as one. 49
- Probably not a substantial claim. 14
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“At the same time, however, very small details that are relevant to reading are maintained and even amplified.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“When word reading is contrasted to a resting period, the active regions obviously comprise a large unspecific component of visual activity.”
boosted- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“Thus, Booth et al. (2002a, 2003) observed an activation of the VWFA (TC 45, 57, 12) when subjects engaged in a spelling task on auditory words, but not when they engaged in a rhyming task on the same stimuli.”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Booth et al. (2002a, 2003)
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
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- Not matched
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Essentially all subjects show wordinduced activation in the left hemisphere, whereas a symmetrical right-sided activation is only found in a few subjects and at a weaker level.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Consistent with a topdown effect, we observed a left posterior inferotemporal activation even when spoken words were presented, and with a greater intensity during the grapheme task than during the phoneme task.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cohen et al., in preparation
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
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In the paper
“Furthermore, the anterior activations were sensitive to the semantic demands of the task, whereas the posterior activations were observed even for visual pseudo-words relative to random letter strings.”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Puce et al. (1996) report single-subject activations during passive presentation of visual words, faces, and textures. Nine out of twelve subjects showed greater activation to words than to faces in the left occipitotemporal sulcus, although a neighboring but slightly more mesial site conversely showed preferential activation to faces than to words.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Puce et al. (1996) source
plaincorrelationaln = 9- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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In the paper
“Hasson et al. (2003) suggest that the visual word-related activation always falls at a systematic location at the boundary between object-selective and face-selective regions in a large-scale map of object preference.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Hasson et al. (2003) source
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“In agreement with our hypotheses, in every subject, the left posterior fusiform gyrus was activated by visual words but there was no trace of activation by spoken words.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Dehaene et al., 2002 source
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“This region showed the same selectivity whether the stimuli were presented foveally or peripherally, confirming a previous demonstration of location invariance in this region (Cohen et al., 2000).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cohen et al., 2000 source
boosted- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“However, recent work using MEG to compare spoken and written word processing confirms that posterior inferior temporal activation is present early on (approximately 170 ms) when reading words, but are absent or confined to the late part of the epoch when hearing words (Marinkovic et al., 2003, Figs. 1 and 4).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Marinkovic et al., 2003 source
boostedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Recently, for instance, we showed that its posterior part contains case-invariant but not location-invariant letter detectors, whereas its middle part is invariant across both case and location and may be sensitive to units larger that a single letter (see Dehaene et al., in press).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Dehaene et al., in press
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“More anteriorily, priming became location invariant, though present for both words and their anagrams, suggesting a location-invariant sublexical code.”
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Although this region was admittedly larger than the VWFA strictly defined, it precisely encompassed the region of activation to words identified in fMRI studies of reading (Cohen et al., 2003).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cohen et al., 2003 source
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“We formulated the idea that an area in the midportion of the left fusiform gyrus, which activates whenever literate subjects are presented with strings of letters, contributes crucially to the cerebral basis of the visual word form.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cohen et al., 2000 source
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
- Rests on an assumption: Reading in literate adults requires quick identification of visual words across large variations of irrelevant parameters such as position, size, color, font, or case.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Our visual system is attuned to the minute difference between ''eight'' and ''sight'', which it amplifies so that we ultimately address completely different regions of lexical space, although it discards the much greater differences between ''eight'' and ''EIGHT''.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“We show that it must achieve perceptual invariance, parallel letter processing, and tuning to a specific writing system.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“The VWFA hypothesis was framed in the broader context of recent studies of functional specialization within the human ventral visual stream, in which have been identified several areas specialized for other classes of visual stimuli such as faces, places, or body parts (Downing et al., 2001; Hasson et al., 2003; Haxby et al., 2001; Kanwisher et al., 1997).”
What the sources say
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“It is possible that the overlap is merely due to the coexistence of distinct, functionally unrelated circuits within approximately the same region.”
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In particularly, within the visual system, we claim that whenever subjects read a word, a reproducible portion of the left occipitotemporal sulcus is activated and hosts functionally specialized circuits for letter and word recognition.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Based: unclear — It is unclear why the paper says it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“The word superiority effect is the fact that when asked to detect the presence of a letter, subjects typically show superior performance when the letter is embedded in a visual string that respects the structure of the learned language than when it is embedded in a random string.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Reicher, 1969 source
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Rather, the density of neurons activated during reading probably varies continuously, though nonrandomly, across the surface of the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, thus creating a landscape of local preference for various categories of objects (Hasson et al., 2002; Haxby et al., 2001).”
What the sources say
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The issue of the nature of the contribution of a given cortical sector to reading (e.g. Is it caseindependent? Is it location-invariant? Does it code for single letters, or for graphemes, syllables, or morphemes?) can be addressed completely independently of the orthogonal issue of whether neurons in this cortical sector also contribute to object or face recognition.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“All in all, both computational arguments and experimental psychological data point to specialization for visual word recognition in skilled readers.”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“This phenomenon, which is found with real words, pseudo-words (Spoehr and Smith, 1975), and even nonwords sufficiently similar to words such as SPCT (Rumelhart and McClelland, 1982), implies the existence of a mechanism tuned to the possible structures of visual words.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Spoehr and Smith, 1975
- Not checked yetcites Rumelhart and McClelland, 1982
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Rather, reading poses particular problems to the visual system, some of which (such as case invariance) are specific to reading in a given script.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“There may be columns of neurons specialized for the recognition of letters, graphemes, or words, but they are likely to be intermixed with other neurons involved in object and face recognition (Puce et al., 1999).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Puce et al., 1999 source
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Those results suggest that posterior inferotemporal activations during auditory word processing are optional and contingent on the engagement of the subject in orthographic processing.”
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“To demonstrate functional specialization in the VWFA, one should exhibit a pattern of activation that cannot be reduced to generic visual processes, but necessarily reflects regularities of the writing system.”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“High-resolution single-subject studies are needed to evaluate the claim that the very same region is activated in both cases.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“It is likely that, as our ability to image this region evolves, more subdivisions will appear within what we currently think of as a single VWFA.”
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim. It may be too vague to check against evidence. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“This indicates clearly that this region is not a supramodal area and is not automatically activated during auditory word processing.”
boosted- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“More frequently, pure alexic patients show relatively preserved, albeit slow, letter identification abilities and resort to letter-by-letter reading strategies (for references, see Montant and Behrmann, 2000).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Montant and Behrmann, 2000
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“This indicates that processing in the VWFA goes beyond generic processes of size and location normalization, and is capable of establishing the arbitrary links between upperand lower-case letters.”
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Although it appears slightly more anterior than the VWFA, methodological differences in the reconstruction of lesions may be sufficient to account for this discrepancy.”
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Similarly, a few cases of alexia restricted to the RVF have been reported, and may be due to left intrahemispheric lesions deafferenting the VWFA but sparing low-level visual regions (Castro-Caldas and Salgado, 1984).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Castro-Caldas and Salgado, 1984
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“One lesion was a haemorrhage large enough to cause 1 month of coma, and the other one was an invasive temporoparietal glioma which had been evolving for several years, and there is no evidence that the fusiform was spared.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Warrington and Shallice, 1980
plainn = 2- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Thus, although the precision of the correlations should still be improved, there is good convergence towards the site of the VWFA as the anatomical correlate of pure alexia.”
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“To take but one example, Beversdorf et al. (1997) report a case with a limited surgical excision and demonstrative postmortem data.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Beversdorf et al., 1997
plainSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“This clinical pattern thus reflects (1) the loss of fast and parallel letter perception mechanisms and (2) in severe cases, the loss of single letter identification abilities.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Our hypothesis implies that pure alexia should result either from a disruption of the VWFA itself, or from impaired projections to or from this system.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Actually, the extent of the patients' lesions was not reported in any detail, and the fusiform gyrus may well have been affected.”
hedgedn = 2- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“This holds quite generally, at least in passive viewing conditions or with tasks that require equal attention to words and to consonant strings; no difference, or even a reversal, can be observed if the task is more difficult to perform with consonant strings than with words (Cohen et al., 2003).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cohen et al., 2003 source
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“IT neurons are able to learn new arbitrary shapes (Logothetis et al., 1995), and arbitrary pairings of stimuli (Sakai and Miyashita, 1991), which might be an analogue of learning letters and of linking arbitrarily related upper- and lowercase letters.”
What the sources say
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“One should keep in mind that this picture results from imaging methods with limited resolution (several millimeters) and may change as one becomes able to visualize or record from small cortical patches, columns, or even single neurons.”
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“The region that activates to visual words is well delimited and occupies a fixed location relative to other regions that preferentially respond to faces, houses, or objects (Hasson et al., 2002, 2003; Puce et al., 1996).”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Hasson et al., 2002, 2003
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
- Not checked yetcites Puce et al., 1996 source
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
In the paper
“However, she could accurately discriminate real letters from visually equivalent pseudo-letters, as well as normally oriented letters from mirror-reversed letters.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Miozzo and Caramazza, 1998
hedgedSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“We claim that this constitutes sufficient evidence to label this region the visual word form area, even if at present the evidence for the third type of cortical specialization (regional selectivity) is not definitive.”
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: unclear — It is unclear whether it could be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Finally, it should be remembered that it takes years for children to develop expert word recognition (Aghababian and Nazir, 2000), and that the emergence of this expertise correlates with the amount of activation of the VWFA by letter strings in normal and dyslexic children (McCandliss et al., 2003; Shaywitz et al., 2002; Temple, 2002).”
What the sources say
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“This suggests a loss of abstract orthographic knowledge, with preservation of a basic familiarity with individual letter shapes.”
hedgedcorrelationalSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Rather, they reflect the breakdown of the functional specialization incorporated during the acquisition of literacy, including knowledge of the finite set of characters, the links between upper- and lower-case letters, and the organization in arbitrary subsets of symbols such as letters and digits.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“As to the left lateralization of the VWFA, it may result from interhemispheric differences in the processing of spatial frequencies (Kitterle and Selig, 1991) or in the invariant vs. token-specific coding of visual objects (Burgund and Marsolek, 1997).”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Kitterle and Selig, 1991
- Not checked yetcites Burgund and Marsolek, 1997
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The 5400 years that have elapsed since its invention are too short to permit the evolution of dedicated biological mechanisms for learning to read.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
- Rests on an assumption: Reading is a recent cultural activity of the human species.
In the paper
“Neurophysiological and optical imaging methods indicate a high degree of local cortical specialization in inferotemporal (IT) neurons (Tanaka, 1996), with columnar clustering of cells with similar selectivity.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Tanaka, 1996 source
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“There is thus no ready-made ''module'' for visual word recognition, but a progressive specialization process that capitalizes on the plasticity of the human ventral inferotemporal cortex to build the VWFA.”
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Thus, the evidence to date favors a model of partially distributed and overlapping representation of visual categories (Haxby et al., 2000, 2001), with a landscape of partial but not absolute preferences across the ventral cortical surface.”
What the sources say
- Not matchedcites Haxby et al., 2000, 2001
Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Not matched
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The lateralization may also imply preferential connections to lefthemispheric language areas.”
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Psychological, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging data converge to suggest that the human brain of literate subjects contains specialized mechanisms for visual word recognition (functional specialization), which map in a systematic way onto the properties of a cortical subregion of the left posterior occipitotemporal sulcus (reproducible localization).”
hedgedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“They also observed that whenever the distractors were digits or simple geometrical shapes, the patient could easily match lower- and upper-case letters, or pick out a printed letter named by the examiner, although these tasks were severely impaired when the distractors were other letters.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Chanoine et al., 1998 source
plaincorrelationalSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“For instance, the patient studied by Miozzo and Caramazza (1998) was severely impaired at naming single letters, and she was unable to decide whether an upper- and lower-case letter had the same name or not.”
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Miozzo and Caramazza, 1998
plainSingle case- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper relies on this without support.
Reading in literate adults requires quick identification of visual words across large variations of irrelevant parameters such as position, size, color, font, or case.
“The efficiency of reading in literate adults rests on the ability to quickly identify visual words across large variations of irrelevant parameters such as position, size, color, font, or case.”
The paper relies on this without support.
The VWFA can be reproducibly observed in all cultures, even in readers of nonalphabetic scripts.
“We further claim that this area can be reproducibly observed in all cultures, even in readers of nonalphabetic scripts.”
The paper relies on this without support.
PET group data are typically generated with a spatial smoothness of 15 mm.
“However, such data are typically generated with a spatial smoothness of 15 mm in PET group studies.”
The paper relies on this without support.
Reading is a recent cultural activity of the human species.
“Reading is a recent cultural activity of the human species.”
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Interestingly, the region of posterior temporal cortex more active for the letter than category fluency conditions overlaps with an area implicated by previous studies as being involved in the visual processing of word forms (i.e., the visual word form areas, VWFA; McCandliss et al., 2003), as well as with other word processing sites that appears to have a multimodal function; i.e., for combining”
From Neural systems supporting lexical search guided by letter and semantic category cues: a self-paced overt response fMRI study of verbal fluency (2010) · cites this paper as Cohen et al., 2004
Citations
Cites
The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception
Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., & Chun, M. M. (1997) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.17-11-04302.1997 · Cited by 7,738
From Neuropsychology to Mental Structure
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Distributed and overlapping representations of faces and objects in ventral temporal cortex
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Self-citationBuilding Memories: Remembering and Forgetting of Verbal Experiences as Predicted by Brain Activity
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The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus
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Resting-state functional connectivity and reading abilities in first and second languages
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The Cambridge Handbook of Infant Development
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Metadata
- Authors
- Cohen, L., & Dehaene, S.
- Affiliations
- Inserm (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Cohen, Laurent
- Venue
- NeuroImage
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2004-05
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 466-476
- ISSN
- 1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2018304854
- Semantic Scholar
- c97c894ecdafa03fd140acc8f7877c7734b43e73
- Cited by
- 776
- References
- 116
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 30 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 52 · 2019: 47 · 2018: 34 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 32 · 2015: 40 · 2014: 43 · 2013: 54 · 2012: 46
- FWCI
- 54.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- NeuroImage (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- visual word form area, ventral stream, visual word recognition, reading, functional specialization, regional selectivity, pure alexia, letter recognition, inferotemporal cortex, reading acquisition
- MeSH terms
- Dyslexia, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neuropsychological Tests, Occipital Lobe, Reading, Temporal Lobe, Tomography, Emission-Computed, Visual Perception, Magnetoencephalography
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-08, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).
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