Table 1.
Previous studies reporting left vOT activation during reading: A MEDLINE search was conducted (from January 2000 to October 2018) using the keywords (i) ‘Reading’, (ii) ‘fMRI’ or ‘magnetic resonance imaging’ and (iii) ‘occipitotemporal’, ‘occipito-temporal’, or ‘visual word form area’ to identify papers that had reported activation during reading in left vOT. Relevant references within these articles also directed us to other papers that were considered in the literature review. Altogether, we identified 213 articles. We then excluded: (i) reviews and meta-analyses (i.e. those not reporting original-research), (ii) effects from subjects who were not neurologically or psychiatrically “normal” adults, or who had atypical learning, (iii) effects that were not related to visually presented words or pseudowords, (iv) effects not reported in standardized coordinates, (v) results of contrasts that compared visual stimuli to rest or fixation (because it was impossible to determine the level of cognitive processing that was driving activation), (vi) single case studies, (vii) co-ordinates related to laterality indices, (viii) effects in predefined regions of interest (region-based analyses), and (ix) studies published in non-English journals. Where appropriate, stereotactic Talairach coordinates were converted into Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) space. For each study, we reported the location of the left vOT activation peak. The median of all vOT peaks is [x = −43 mm, y = −58 mm, z = −14.5 mm]. Activation contrasts were categorised as being related to: (1) changes in task demands where subjects performed different tasks with the same set of stimuli or (2) changes in stimulus demands where subjects performed the same task with different sets of stimuli. Task driven contrasts were further categorised into those primarily driven by visual (e.g. letter detection versus phoneme detection), semantic (e.g. semantic versus identity one-back matching), or general demands (e.g. one-back matching versus passive viewing). Stimulus driven contrasts were further categorised into those primarily driven by visual differences (e.g. written words versus pictures of objects), linguistic content (e.g. words versus false fonts), a combination of visual differences and linguistic content (e.g. words versus checkerboards), semantic content (e.g. high versus low imageable words), general demands (e.g. unfamiliar versus familiar words), or stimulus primes (i.e. less activation when stimuli were preceded by identical ones). In some papers, superior peaks at z ≥ −12mm were labelled as inferior occipital gyrus instead of vOT.
| Study | MNI coordinates |
Factor driving activation | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x | y | z | ||
| Cohen et al. (2002) | −39 | −57 | −9 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Binder et al. (2005a) | −42 | −55 | −10 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Chee et al. (2000)* | −43 | −56 | −10 | Task: semantic demands |
| Xu et al. (2015) | −40 | −56 | −10 | Stimuli & task: visual/linguistic |
| Bruno et al. (2008) | −46 | −56 | −11 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Xue et al. (2006) | −42 | −53 | −12 | Task: general demands |
| Nosarti et al. (2010) | −44 | −54 | −12 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Dehaene et al. (2010) | −45 | −57 | −12 | Stimuli: primes |
| Stevens et al. (2017) | −52 | −49 | −13 | Stimuli: visual content |
| Weiss and Booth (2017) | −36 | −48 | −14 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Hayashi et al. (2014) | −48 | −54 | −14 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Purcell et al. (2011) | −40 | −56 | −14 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Quinn et al. (2017) | −42 | −60 | −8 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Dehaene et al. (2004) | −44 | −64 | −8 | Stimuli: primes |
| Peng et al. (2003)* | −43 | −66 | −9 | Stimuli: linguistic content |
| Guo and Burgund (2010)* | −43 | −70 | −9 | Task: visual demands |
| Schurz et al. (2010) | −44 | −60 | −10 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Woollams et al. (2011) | −44 | −62 | −10 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Weiss and Booth (2017) | −46 | −62 | −10 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Cohen et al. (2008) | −42 | −70 | −10 | Stimuli: linguistic content |
| Sussman et al. (2018) | −40 | −62 | −10 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Twomey et al. (2013) | −45 | −58 | −11 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Kiehl et al. (1999) | −41 | −60 | −12 | Stimuli & task: visual/linguistic |
| Carreiras et al. (2007) | −40 | −66 | −12 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Wimmer et al. (2016) | −48 | −58 | −14 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Wright et al. (2008) | −48 | −58 | −14 | Task: semantic demands |
| Yarkoni et al. (2008)* | −44 | −52 | −15 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Mongelli et al. (2017) | −44 | −55 | −15 | Stimuli: visual content |
| Cohen et al. (2002) | −42 | −57 | −15 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Sandak et al. (2004) | −45 | −50 | −16 | Stimuli: semantic content |
| Richardson et al. (2011) | −40 | −54 | −16 | Stimuli: linguistic content |
| Danelli et al. (2013) | −40 | −56 | −16 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Binder et al. (2005b) | −42 | −52 | −17 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Kronbichler et al. (2004) | −42 | −50 | −18 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Szwed et al. (2014) | −42 | −54 | −18 | Stimuli: linguistic content |
| Schuster et al. (2015) | −39 | −46 | −20 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Dehaene et al. (2001) | −44 | −52 | −20 | Stimuli: primes |
| Thesen et al. (2012) | −46 | −52 | −20 | Stimuli: linguistic content |
| Chee et al. (2000)* | −43 | −60 | −15 | Task: semantic demands |
| Kronbichler et al. (2009) | −48 | −60 | −15 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Cohen et al. (2003) | −42 | −63 | −15 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Xue and Poldrack (2007) | −39 | −66 | −15 | Stimuli: primes |
| Kao et al. (2010) | −41 | −58 | −16 | Stimuli: linguistic content |
| Kherif et al. (2011) | −40 | −58 | −16 | Stimuli: primes |
| Cohen et al. (2004) | −44 | −64 | −16 | Task: visual demands |
| Mechelli et al. (2003) | −44 | −64 | −16 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Wang et al. (2018) | −48 | −64 | −16 | Stimuli: semantic content |
| Chee et al. (2003)* | −45 | −58 | −17 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Booth et al. (2002) | −42 | −60 | −18 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |
| Devlin et al. (2006) | −42 | −60 | −18 | Stimuli: linguistic content |
| Kronbichler et al. (2007) | −48 | −60 | −18 | Stimuli: general demands |
| Danelli et al. (2015) | −40 | −64 | −18 | Stimuli: visual/linguistic content |