Functions of the visual word form area for the segmentation processing of Japanese sentences: an fMRI study

摘要

The visual word form area (VWFA) in left bursiform gyrus of the human brain responds selectively to visual representation of the letter strings. However, the key questions regarding VWFA activation was not clear. We focused especially on the segmentation processing in sentence comprehension, and tried to elucidate the role of the VWFA during the processing of segmentation relative to reading by fMRI. Three right-handed, native Japanese speakers read Japanese hiragana sentences in 3 condition (unregimented sentence, US; appropriately segmented sentence, ASS; inappropriately segmented sentence, ISS). We found that US and ISS induced greater activity than ASS in the VWFA. Thus, we suggested that the VWFA is activate during re-partition or rearranged segments.