Multivariate pattern similarity of hemodynamic brain responses to spoken and written words increases during primary school

Learning to read requires binding auditory and visual information together, yet how the developing brain maps information across sensory modalities at different levels of reading experience remains poorly understood. To shed light on this topic we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate hemodynamic brain responses during spoken and written word recognition in primary school children learning to read the alpha-syllabic Hindi Devanagari script in the first, second, or fourth grade of primary school. Multivariate audiovisual similarity of activation patterns in the inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, posterior superior and middle temporal gyrus, and temporo-occipital cortex, increased with school grade. This effect was independent from the behavioral performance in a semantic judgement task performed in the scanner. Our results suggest that, as children learn to read during primary school, their brain responses to written language become more similar to their brain responses to spoken language.