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What and where in mirror reading
Author(s) -
Ilg Rüdiger,
Dauner Ruth,
Wohlschläger Afra Maria,
Liebau Yasmin,
Zihl Josef,
Mühlau Mark
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2010.00994.x
Subject(s) - psychology , functional magnetic resonance imaging , dorsum , neuroscience , reading (process) , visual cortex , posterior parietal cortex , cortex (anatomy) , voxel , mirror neuron , cognitive psychology , anatomy , artificial intelligence , biology , computer science , political science , law
In a combined voxel‐based morphometry and functional magnetic resonance imaging study on the practice of mirror reading, we recently found a shift of activation from right superior parietal to right dorsal occipital cortex and a corresponding increase of gray matter. We interpreted this shift of activation and the corresponding structural changes as a shift from effortful visuospatial transformation to a more direct processing of mirrored words (Ilg et al., 2008). To test this hypothesis, we now analyzed brain activation patterns associated with different aspects of mirror reading. Activation at the dorsal occipital cortex and bilateral parietal cortex (dorsal visual stream) was related to inverse text processing, whereas activation of areas at the inferior and ventral occipitotemporal cortex (ventral visual stream) was associated with decoding of mirrored words. This indicates that the dichotomy of content‐related (“what”) and process‐related (“where”) higher visual functions also applies to mirror reading.