Concordance between white-matter pathways and functional circuits linking the VWFA and IPS

The visual word form area (VWFA) within ventral temporal-occipital cortex (VTOC) plays a crucial role in reading, but increasing evidence points toits broader role in symbolic information processing. Consistent with this view, a recent resting-state fMRI study showed that the VWFA is strongly connected to the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), rather than classical language areas. Given emerging proposals that connectivity patterns of brain regions involved in similar processes may constrain functional specialization, it becomes particularly relevant to understand the functional and anatomical connectivity of the VWFA and their inter-relations, which remain poorly understood. We used state-of-the-art computational techniques and a large dataset to address three aims: (i) reliability of resting-state functionalconnectivity of VWFA; (ii) white matter connectivity of the VWFA; and (iii) concordance between functional and anatomical connectivity associatedwith the VWFA.