Human brain mapping
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Human brain mapping · Mar 2003
Neural basis of the non-attentional processing of briefly presented words.
The neural basis of the automatic activation of words was investigated in an fMRI study. In the study, words were presented briefly (51 or 151 msec) followed by a mask. To prevent attentional processing, subjects attended to the masks and not the words, and were required to make perceptual judgment about the masks. ⋯ When the presentation duration was 151 msec, no significant difference in activation was found between high- and low-frequency words. Alternatively, when the presentation duration was 51 msec, high-frequency words evoked significantly greater activation in bilateral fusiform gyri, cerebellum, right inferior parietal lobe, medial frontal gyrus (BA 45/46/9), and the right temporal-occipital junction (BA 21/37). These results suggest that these regions are sensitive to word frequency, and are related to both the attentional and non-attentional access of lexical representations.