Multi-voxel pattern analysis of noun and verb differences in ventral temporal cortex

•We apply multi-voxel pattern analysis to classify the prediction of nouns vs. verbs.•We present a novel method of probing word prediction in the absence of linguistic stimulus.•We find that voxels in left ventral temporal cortex can classify prediction of nouns vs. verbs.•Study suggests probabilistic relationship between a word’s syntactic category and its form. Recent evidence suggests a probabilistic relationship exists between the phonological/orthographic form of a word and its lexical-syntactic category (specifically nouns vs. verbs) such that syntactic prediction may elicit form-based estimates in sensory cortex. We tested this hypothesis by conducting multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) of fMRI data from early visual cortex (EVC), left ventral temporal (VT) cortex, and a subregion of the latter – the left mid fusiform gyrus (mid FG), sometimes called the “visual word form area.” Crucially, we examined only those volumes sampled when subjects were predicting, but not viewing, nouns and verbs. This allowed us to investigate prediction effects in visual areas without any bottom-up orthographic input. We found that voxels in VT and mid FG, but not in EVC, were able to classify noun-predictive trials vs. verb-predictive trials in sentence contexts, suggesting that sentence-level predictions are sufficient to generate word form-based estimates in visual areas.