Naturalistic reading of multi-page texts elicits spatially extended modulation of oscillatory activity in the right hemisphere




Mäkelä, Sasu; Kujala, Jan; Ojala, Pauliina; Hyönä, Jukka; Salmelin, Riitta

PublisherNature portfolio

2024

Scientific Reports

30800

14

2045-2322

2045-2322

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-81098-3

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-81098-3

https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/477895314



The study of the cortical basis of reading has greatly benefited from the use of naturalistic paradigms that permit eye movements. However, due to the short stimulus lengths used in most naturalistic reading studies, it remains unclear how reading of texts comprising more than isolated sentences modulates cortical processing. To address this question, we used magnetoencephalography to study the spatiospectral distribution of oscillatory activity during naturalistic reading of multi-page texts. In contrast to previous results, we found abundant activity in the right hemisphere in several frequency bands, whereas reading-related modulation of neural activity in the left hemisphere was quite limited. Our results show that the role of the right hemisphere may be importantly emphasized as the reading process extends beyond single sentences.


This work was financially supported by the Academy of Finland (grants #315553 and #355407), the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and Aalto Brain Centre.


Last updated on 2025-27-01 at 19:31