A team of neuroscientists in the USA have rediscovered a major pathway in the brain that might be crucial for certain skills such as reading.

The pathway was discovered in the nineteenth century, but written off as unimportant. It's a massive white matter tract at the back of the brain that's been overlooked for the past century.

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After that, it mysteriously disappeared from scientific literature.

The study confirms the prominent white matter tract is present in the human brain. It argues this part of the brain it plays an important and unique role in the processing of visual information.

It is called the "vertical occipital fasciculus" (VOF). The VOF is a large bundle of nerves that forms long-range connections between sub-regions of the visual system at the back part of the brain.

German neurologist Carl Wernicke was the first scientist to discover this area. He first saw the VOF in slices of monkey brains and included it in the 1881 brain atlas.

Jason Yeatman and several colleagues at Stanford University stumbled upon the VOF by accident. Using modern neuroimaging techniques, they've been visualizing the brain's long range connections.

Their goal was to investigate neural mechanisms underlying language processing and reading. Two years ago, they reported the growth pattern of the VOF predicts how a child's reading skills will develop over time.

"I stumbled upon it while studying the visual word form area," says Yeatman. "In every subject, I found this large, vertically-oriented fiber bundle terminating in that region of the brain."

Given the functions of the associated brain regions, researchers speculate the VOF plays an important role in perceptual processes such as reading and recognizing faces.

Yeatman has begun examining how learning to read impacts the brain's structure. He says he wouldn't be surprised if the VOF ended up playing a central role in the investigation.

TagsVOF, Major Pathway of Brain, Rediscovered, Jason Yeatman