WORD RECOGNITION IN THE HUMAN INFERIOR TEMPORAL-LOBE

STUDIES of primates(1) and of patients with brain lesions(2) have show n that the visual system represents the external world in regions and pathways specialized to compute visual features and attributes. For ex ample, object recognition is performed by a ventral pathway located in the inferior portion of the temporal lobe(3). We studied visual proce ssing of words and word-like stimuli (letter-strings) by recording hel d potentials directly from the human inferior temporal lobe. Our resul ts showed that two discrete portions of the fusiform gyrus responded p referentially to letter-strings. A region of the posterior fusiform gy rus responded equally to words and nonwords, and was unaffected by the semantic context in which words were presented. In contrast, a region of the anterior fusiform gyrus was sensitive to these stimulus dimens ions. These regions were distinct from areas that responded to other t ypes of complex visual stimuli, including faces and coloured patterns, and thus form a functionally specialized stream within the ventral vi sual pathway.