The representation of segmental information: an fMRI investigation of the consonant-vowel distinction

Recent studies suggest that consonants and vowels are representedseparately in cognitive/neural space. Much of the evidencecomes from research on dysgraphia (for review, see Miceli & Capasso,submitted). In the first place, letter substitution errors preservethe consonant/vowel (CV) status of the target (e.g., cinema fi ciremaor cinoma, but not cintma). Second, there are reports of selectiveimpairment for consonants or vowels. Additional evidence comesfrom disorders of phonology, demonstrating the dissociability betweenconsonants and vowels (Caramazza, Chialant, Capasso, &Miceli, 2000). However, while neuropsychological observationsclearly support the C/V distinction, the anatomical correlates of suchdistinction are still unknown. We investigated this issue by means ofan event-related fMRI experiment, with a grapheme verificationtask.