Friedman, R. B. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2025

Dissecting the sublexical route for reading: Frontal and parietal networks support learned orthography-to-phonology mappings

Oral reading relies on lexical and sublexical processes with distinct neural mechanisms. Damage within the sublexical system causes phonological alexia, a blanket diagnosis describing acquired deficits in reading unfamiliar words. Improving the precision of alexia diagnosis requires understanding the neurocognitive basis of specific reading subprocesses. This study investigated the neural correlates of sublexical reading in 64 adults with chronic left-hemisphere stroke (LHS), focusing on lesions that impair the use of learned orthography-to-phonology (OP) mappings to read new words. Participants read aloud real words and three types of pseudowords varying in the number of plausible OP mappings at the level of the orthographic body: zero mappings (0M), one mapping (1M), and multiple mappings (MM). LHS participants exhibited phonological reading deficits with an exaggerated lexicality effect compared to 71 neurotypical controls. Across both groups, pseudowords with learned OP mappings were read more accurately than those without. Voxelwise and connectome-based lesion-symptom mapping revealed that relative lexical reading deficits were associated with lateral temporal lesions, while sublexical reading deficits were associated with lesions or disconnections of the left inferior frontal (IFG), supramarginal, and pre/postcentral gyri. Applying learned OP mappings relied on anterior IFG and frontoparietal connections, while resolving multiple plausible OP mappings relied on intraparietal connections. These results underscore the role of learned mutigraphemic OP mappings in sublexical reading, and demonstrate that disruptions of different sublexical reading subprocesses result in subtly different deficit patterns. Dissecting the neurocognitive basis of reading subprocesses may improve the precision of alexia diagnosis and point to new treatments.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Meaning for reading: The neurocognitive basis of semantic reading impairment after stroke

Diagnosis of alexia has historically focused on syndromes, such as surface alexia, which capture discrete patterns of reading deficits observed in some patients, but do not describe the breadth of reading deficits observed in practice. Aphasia research has recently shifted focus to language process impairments rather than syndromic classifications. A similar shift in focus to reading process impairments may improve our diagnostic approach to alexia. Behavioural evidence suggests that semantic processing influences reading aloud, and that semantic deficits in the context of semantic dementia underlie surface alexia. Because stroke rarely causes loss of semantic knowledge and surface alexia as a syndromic diagnosis is unusual after stroke, semantic reading deficits in stroke alexia have not previously been examined systematically. Semantic reading deficits in stroke may not relate to semantic deficits per se, but rather an inability to use semantics to support reading. Imageability, the degree to which a word brings to mind an image, is one index of semantic influences on reading. High imageability words are read more quickly by healthy persons and more accurately following brain damage. Here, we test if deficits of semantic reading after stroke, as indexed by reduced imageability effects, result from semantic or post-semantic processes. Examining nonverbal semantic processing, semantics-phonology mapping, and semantic control in a sample of 56 left-hemisphere stroke survivors, only semantics-phonology mappings predicted the reading advantage for high imageability words over low imageability words. Support vector regression voxel-based lesion symptom mapping revealed that damage along the superior temporal sulcus and underlying white matter, extending into both the middle and superior temporal gyri, reduced the advantage of high imageability over low imageability words during reading, reflecting an inability to use semantics to support reading. A similar cluster related to impairments in semantics-phonology mapping. The imageability and semantics-phonology mapping results overlapped in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus. Support vector regression connectome lesion symptom mapping revealed white matter disconnections within a broad temporoparietal network important for both phonological and semantic processing were associated with a reduction of the imageability advantage during reading. These results demonstrate that, irrespective of syndromic classification, semantic reading deficits occur in left-hemisphere stroke survivors as a result of impaired integration of semantic and phonological representations, and that the left posterior superior temporal sulcus underlies this process. Our results clarify the neurobiology of reading aloud, and support the existence of a post-semantic impairment of semantic reading in left-hemisphere stroke survivors.

neuroscience↗