Audiovisual integration of letters in the human brain

Letters of the alphabet have auditory (phonemic) and visual (graphemic) qualities. To investigate the neural representations of such audiovisual objects, we recorded neuromagnetic cortical responses to auditorily, visually, and audiovisually presented single letters. The auditory and visual brain ac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuron (Cambridge, Mass.) Mass.), 2000-11, Vol.28 (2), p.617-625
Main Authors: Raij, T, Uutela, K, Hari, R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adult
Auditory Pathways - physiology
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
Female
Humans
Magnetoencephalography
Male
Nerve Net - physiology
Occipital Lobe - physiology
Parietal Lobe - physiology
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Reaction Time - physiology
Reading
Speech Perception - physiology
Temporal Lobe - physiology
Visual Pathways - physiology
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Summary:Letters of the alphabet have auditory (phonemic) and visual (graphemic) qualities. To investigate the neural representations of such audiovisual objects, we recorded neuromagnetic cortical responses to auditorily, visually, and audiovisually presented single letters. The auditory and visual brain activations first converged around 225 ms after stimulus onset and then interacted predominantly in the right temporo-occipito-parietal junction (280345 ms) and the left (380-540 ms) and right (450-535 ms) superior temporal sulci. These multisensory brain areas, playing a role in audiovisual integration of phonemes and graphemes, participate in the neural network supporting the supramodal concept of a "letter." The dynamics of these functions bring new insight into the interplay between sensory and association cortices during object recognition.
ISSN:0896-6273
DOI:10.1016/S0896-6273(00)00138-0