A. Location of putative letterform and wordform areas used for this analysis. B. BOLD response in these areas to the letterform contrast (CS, consonant strings, as compared to false fonts, FF) and wordform contrast (N, novel words, as compared to CS). BOLD signal in the letterform area (left) is very sensitive to the CS versus FF contrast but not to the N versus CS contrast, i.e., it is sensitive to whether the stimulus is composed of letters but not to whether the letters compose a word. In contrast, BOLD signal in the wordform area is somewhat sensitive to whether the stimulus is composed of letters (CSvFF), but is more sensitive to whether the letters compose a word. ANOVA for area (letterform, wordform) × contrast (CSvFF, NvCS) showed a significant area × contrast interaction (p<.05, F(11)=5.05). The BOLD response is in arbitrary units.