Category-related activation for written words in the posterior fusiform is task specific

Category-related brain activations have been reported in the posterior fusiform gyri when people view pictures of tools and animals, but only a single study has observed this pattern when the stimuli were words, rather than pictures. Here we replicate these category effects with words and provide evidence that distinctive patterns of activation are task specific. The results suggest that category-related activation in the posterior fusiform gyri can be driven either bottom-up by visual processing of images or top-down by word processing. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.