Neurobiology of the reading system

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The role of the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) in the reading of exception words (i.e. words with atypical spelling-to-sound correspondence, such as 'yatch' and 'colonel') has been subject of intense debate in the field of neurobiology of language. This obscurity remains primarily because patient data and neuroimaging studies on healthy subjects have provided contradictory results. Patient data have consistently shown that the ability to read exception words is mediated by the semantic memory system (i.e., the memory system that is responsible for conceptual knowledge) and is associated with the integrity of the anterior temporal lobes. However, functional imaging studies on healthy subjects have failed to confirm these findings and have shown no significant ATL activation during exception word reading.