Visual word form area

The visual word form area (VWFA) is a functional region of the left fusiform gyrus and surrounding cortex (right-hand side being part of the fusiform face area) that is hypothesized to be involved in identifying words and letters from lower-level shape images, prior to association with phonology or semantics.

[9] The basics of this theory state that the neurons in the ventral occipital-temporal cortex (vOT) – which the posterior fusiform gyrus is a part of – have receptive fields that are sensitive to bigrams,[10] or two letter combinations that commonly occur in words.

These results potentially mediate between the pre-lexical and lexical hypotheses by showing that both levels of representation may be seen in the VWFA, but at different latencies after reading a word.

Another major difference between this hypothesis and the prior ones mentioned is that it is not limited to words alone but to any "meaningful stimulus", in fact non-sensical objects may activate the posterior fusiform cortex in order to extract their meaning from higher-level processes.

This may also address why the VWFA is activated even more strongly by line drawings and Amharic characters than by written words familiar to study participants.

[14] One study of a hyperlexic child with ASD showed elevated activation compared to controls of the right posterior inferior temporal sulcus, where the right VWFA (R-VWFA) is thought to be located.

[17] Meta-analysis of studies of children and adults with dyslexia suggests that underactivation of the left occipitotemporal region—particularly the VWFA—may be involved in dyslexics' difficulty with fluid reading.

[18] These reading difficulties may also be related to poor connectivity between the VWFA and associated regions in the parietal cortex responsible for visual attention.