eprintid: 10080420 rev_number: 22 eprint_status: archive userid: 608 dir: disk0/10/08/04/20 datestamp: 2019-09-04 09:47:11 lastmod: 2021-10-09 22:34:49 status_changed: 2019-09-05 13:41:16 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Taylor, JSH creators_name: Davis, MH creators_name: Rastle, K title: Mapping visual symbols onto spoken language along the ventral visual stream ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B02 divisions: C07 divisions: D05 divisions: F71 keywords: fMRI, learning, orthography, reading, representation note: Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). abstract: Reading involves transforming arbitrary visual symbols into sounds and meanings. This study interrogated the neural representations in ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT) that support this transformation process. Twenty-four adults learned to read 2 sets of 24 novel words that shared phonemes and semantic categories but were written in different artificial orthographies. Following 2 wk of training, participants read the trained words while neural activity was measured with functional MRI. Representational similarity analysis on item pairs from the same orthography revealed that right vOT and posterior regions of left vOT were sensitive to basic visual similarity. Left vOT encoded letter identity and representations became more invariant to position along a posterior-to-anterior hierarchy. Item pairs that shared sounds or meanings, but were written in different orthographies with no letters in common, evoked similar neural patterns in anterior left vOT. These results reveal a hierarchical, posterior-to-anterior gradient in vOT, in which representations of letters become increasingly invariant to position and are transformed to convey spoken language information. date: 2019-09-03 official_url: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1818575116 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 1684681 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1818575116 pii: 1818575116 lyricists_name: Taylor, Joanne lyricists_id: JSHTA05 actors_name: Taylor, Joanne actors_id: JSHTA05 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America volume: 116 number: 36 pagerange: 17723-17728 event_location: United States issn: 1091-6490 citation: Taylor, JSH; Davis, MH; Rastle, K; (2019) Mapping visual symbols onto spoken language along the ventral visual stream. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 116 (36) pp. 17723-17728. 10.1073/pnas.1818575116 <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1818575116>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10080420/1/1818575116.full.pdf