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Frontal Eye Field in the Interaction of Reading and Attention: Exploring Functional Activation and Structural Connectivity

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Ron Borowsky¹ (ron.borowsky@usask.ca), Shaylyn Kress^1,2, Josh Neudorf³, Chelsea Ekstrand²; ¹University of Saskatchewan, ²University of Lethbridge, ³Athabasca University

Visual attentional processes are crucial to successful reading skills, with some theories of dyslexia focusing on their dysfunction. Our recent research points to oculomotor control as one attentional mechanism behind reading performance. Given the known role of the frontal-eye-field (FEF) in oculomotor control, the goals of this study were to localize a region of the FEF where reading and attention interact, and examine its connectivity. In Experiment 1, we examined FEF fMRI BOLD activation from a previous hybrid reading and attention study (Ekstrand, Neudorf, Kress & Borowsky, 2019, Cortex). An interaction, specifically in the ventrolateral portion of Brodmann’s Area 6 (A6vl) in the FEF, showed that orthographic lexical processing of exception words (eg. yacht) elicited greater activation during voluntary compared to reflexive attention, whereas phonological lexical processing of pseudohomophones (eg. yawt) showed no difference, suggesting that the FEF-A6vl has orthographic visual word form sensitivity that is heightened during voluntary attention. In Experiment 2, Human Connectome Project diffusion tensor imaging data showed high communicability between the FEF-A6vl and basal ganglia (which plays a role in rhythm during syllabic processing). These connections support tract clusters which terminate in the cerebellar Crus I/II (which play roles in eye movements and semantics) and cerebral superior parietal lobule (which plays a role in attentional orienting and phonetic decoding). Taken together, this research elucidates the involvement of the FEF-A6vl in the interaction of reading and attention, informs the development of integrative models, and can guide reading interventions that target oculomotor control.

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