Abstract

d together in a specific order, because different words can be written with the same letters. The present research had two aims: first, to clarify the cerebral stages of processing that lead to invariant word recognition, and second, to examine whether those stages can proceed in the absence of consciousness. In literate adults, an extended strip of the left fusiform gyrus activates whenever visual words are presented (Cohen et al., 2000; Cohen et al., 2002; Nobre, Allison, & McCarthy, 1994). This region, which has been termed the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), is responsive only to written words, not to spoken words (Dehaene, Le Clec'H, Poline, Le Bihan, & Cohen, 2002). Its lesioning results in a severe word identification impairment, pure alexia, which is restricted to the visual modality (Leff et al., 2001). Thus, it is a plausible candidate for the neural basis of invariant visual word recognition. To further specify the nature of word coding in the VWFA, we used the priming metho

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