For everyone out there working at the intersection of vision and language. We are currently accepting submissions for a Journal of Vision Special Issue on the vision-language interface
Submission deadline: Dec 31st
jov.arvojournals.org/ss/visionlan...

#neuroskyence #VisionScience #PsychSciSky

Anyone attending #VSS2025, @alexlw.bsky.social and I hope to see you Friday 8-10AM to learn more about interactions of language and vision, incl. top-down feedback from language cortex, how learning to read or sign alters cortical development, and interactions of vision with multimodal semantic hubs

We found a distinct region in anterior fusiform cortex whose activity was modulated by memorability while reading these words, with lower activity for more memorable words, potentially suggesting more efficient encoding. This is more anterior than regions involved in early word identification. 9/🧵

Many recent additions to @merriam-webster.com follow these trends of highly memorable pseudowords (e.g. yeet, rizz, janky, adorkable). Potentially, more memorable words are more likely to propagate between individuals and be incorporated into our shared lexicon 7/🧵

The most memorable words have close orthographic neighbours that are unique, low frequency words (e.g. lyrx-lynx, sombat-wombat) that themselves have sparse neighbourhoods. This suggests our existing lexicon acts as a scaffold for our memory of new words. 5/🧵

We tested memory performance for 2100 novel pseudowords across 1800 participants, including some nonsense words from Roald Dahl, AA Milne, Dr Seuss, Lewis Carroll. We found that which words people remember is consistent across people. 3/🧵

Out now in Brain! Using direct cortical stimulation in 49 patients we show distinct regions of ventral temporal cortex that selectively knock out the ability to read or name. Word-selective VWFA can causally and reliably be isolated from other visual language functions.

doi.org/10.1093/brai...

McGovern Medical School, UT Houston