THE CORTICAL LOCALIZATION OF THE LEXICONS: POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY EVIDENCE
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Positron emission tomography was used to investigate changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in neurologically normal subjects during word reading and word repetition. The blood flow in these conditions was compared with control conditions where subjects were presented with stimuli of comparable auditory and visual complexity to real words and said the same word on presentation of each stimulus. The control condition for word repetition (hearing spoken words presented backwards) resulted in bilateral activation of the superior temporal gyrus. Word repetition caused a significant increase in rCBF over this control condition in the left superior and middle temporal gyri. The control condition for word reading (seeing stimuli written in 'false fonts', i.e. non-existent letter-like forms) resulted in significant changes in rCBF bilaterally in the striate and extrastriate cortex. Word reading caused a significant increase in blood flow relative to this control in the posterior part of the left middle temporal gyrus. The implications of these results are discussed, and it is argued that they are consistent with localization of a lexicon for spoken word recognition in the middle part of the left superior and middle temporal gyri, and a lexicon for written word recognition in the posterior part of the left middle temporal gyrus.
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The left posterior middle/superior temporal gyrus was more activated for reading aloud than viewing false fonts and saying a single word.
“The first was the left posterior middle/superior temporal gyrus which was more activated for reading aloud than viewing ‘false fonts’ (non-existent letter-like forms that controlled for visual input) and saying a single word (e.g. “crime” or “range”) to control for speech production (Howard et al., 1992; Small et al., 1996).”
From A review and synthesis of the first 20years of PET and fMRI studies of heard speech, spoken language and reading (2012) · cites this paper as Howard et al., 1992
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- Authors
- HOWARD, D., PATTERSON, K., WISE, R., BROWN, W. D., FRISTON, K., WEILLER, C., & FRACKOWIAK, R.
- Affiliations
- Hammersmith Hospital (GB)
- Charing Cross Hospital (GB)
- Birkbeck, University of London (GB)
- University of Wisconsin System (US)
- University of Duisburg-Essen (DE)
- Corresponding author
- HOWARD, DAVID
- Venue
- Brain
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1992
- Volume
- 115
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1769-1782
- ISSN
- 0006-8950 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2156
- OpenAlex
- W2143583364
- Cited by
- 585
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 18.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Brain (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Newcastle University ePrints (Newcastle Univesity)
- Funders
- James S. McDonnell Foundation
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Hemispheric Asymmetry in Neuroscience
- Keywords
- vocabulary, cortical localization, word reading, word repetition, regional cerebral blood flow, superior temporal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, spoken word recognition, visual word recognition, auditory word processing, visual word processing
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Auditory Perception, Brain, Brain Mapping, Cerebrovascular Circulation, Female, Humans, Language, Male, Middle Aged, Radionuclide Imaging, Visual Perception
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