Neural Responses of the Anterior Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex in Developmental Dyslexia: Beyond the Visual Word Form Area

For the past 2 decades, neuroimaging studies in dyslexia have pointed toward a hypoactivation of the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC), a region that has been closely associated to reading through the extraction of a representation of words which is invariant to position, size, font or case. However, most of the studies are confined to the visual word form area (VWFA), while recent studies have demonstrated a posterior-to-anterior gradient of print specificity along the VOTC. In our study, the whole VOTC, partitioned into three main patches of cortex, is assessed in dyslexic and control adults.