A compositional neural code in high-level visual cortex can explain jumbled word reading

Abstract
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Abstract

We read jubmled wrods effortlessly, but the neural correlates of this remarkable ability remain poorly understood. We hypothesized that viewing a jumbled word activates a visual representation that is compared to known words. To test this hypothesis, we devised a purely visual model in which neurons tuned to letter shape respond to longer strings in a compositional manner by linearly summing letter responses. We found that dissimilarities between letter strings in this model can explain human performance on visual search, and responses to jumbled words in word reading tasks. Brain imaging revealed that viewing a string activates this letter-based code in the lateral occipital (LO) region and that subsequent comparisons to stored words are consistent with activations of the visual word form area (VWFA). Thus, a compositional neural code potentially contributes to efficient reading.

Data availability

Data and code necessary to reproduce the results are available in an Open Science Framework repository at https://osf.io/384zw/

The following data sets were generated

1. VisionLabIISc
(2020) jumbledwordsfMRI
Open Science Framework, 384zw.

https://osf.io/384zw/

Article and author information

Author details

Aakash Agrawal

Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Bangalore, India

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
KVS Hari

Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Bangalore, India

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
SP Arun

Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Bangalore, India

For correspondence
sparun@iisc.ac.in

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9602-5066

Funding

Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance (IA/S/17/1/503081)

SP Arun

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: All subjects gave informed consent to an experimental protocol approved by the Institutional Human Ethics Committee of the Indian Institute of Science (IHEC # 6-15092017).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.