Case mixing and the right parietal cortex: evidence from rTMS

We investigated the necessary role of the right parietal lobe in visual word recognition using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). TMS was applied to the right posterior parietal lobe and to a control area as participants read aloud words presented either in lower case or in mIxEd-cAsE. The words were presented either with unlimited duration and high contrast (Experiment 1), or with brief presentation and low-contrast (Experiments 2 and 3). In all three experiments, TMS over the parietal area disrupted reading, and in Experiments 2 and 3 this effect was most pronounced for mIxEd-cAsE words. This suggests that the right parietal lobe mediates the recognition of words in unfamiliar formats.