By combining the false belief (FB) and photo (PH) vignettes to identify theory-of-mind areas with the false sign (FS) vignettes, we re-establish the functional asymmetry between the left and right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). The right TPJ (TPJ-R) is specially sensitive to processing belief information, whereas the left TPJ (TPJ-L) is equally responsible for FBs as well as FSs. Measuring BOLD at two time points in each vignette, at the time the FB-inducing information (or lack of information) is presented and at the time the test question is processed, made clear that the FB is processed spontaneously as soon as the relevant information is presented and not on demand for answering the question in contrast to extant behavioral data. Finally, a fourth, true belief vignette (TB) required teleological reasoning, that is, prediction of a rational action without any doubts being raised about the adequacy of the actor's information about reality. Activation by this vignette supported claims that the TPJ-R is activated by TBs as well as FBs.

This functional magnetic resonance imaging study contrasted case-deviant and letter-deviant forms with familiar forms of the same phonological words (e.g., TaXi and Taksi vs. Taxi ) and found that both types of deviance led to increased activation in a left occipito-temporal region, corresponding to the visual word form area (VWFA). The sensitivity of the VWFA to both types of deviance may suggest that this region represents well-known visual words not only as sequences of abstract letter identities but also includes information on the typical case-format pattern of visual words. Case-deviant items, in addition, led to increased activation in a right occipito-temporal region and in a left occipital and a left posterior occipito-temporal region, which may reflect increased demands on letter processing posed by the case-deviant forms.

The importance of the left occipitotemporal cortex for visual word processing is highlighted by numerous functional neuroimaging studies, but the precise function of the visual word form area (VWFA) in this brain region is still under debate. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study varied orthographic familiarity independent from phonological-semantic familiarity by presenting orthographically familiar and orthographically unfamiliar forms (pseudohomophones) of the same words in a phonological lexical decision task. Consistent with orthographic word recognition in the VWFA, we found lower activation for familiar compared with unfamiliar forms, but no difference between pseudohomophones and pseudowords. This orthographic familiarity effect in the VWFA differed from the phonological familiarity effect in left frontal regions, where phonologically unfamiliar pseudowords led to higher activation than phonologically familiar pseudohomophones. We suggest that the VWFA not only computes letter string representations but also hosts word-specific orthographic representations. These representations function as recognition units with the effect that letter strings that readily match with stored representations lead to less activation than letter strings that do not.